MAID: Massive Array of Idle Disks

Copan Systems is offering the Revolution 200T, yet another big disk alternative to tape backups. The device claims to scale as high as 224TB in a single cabinet, with up to 896 drives. If you know anything about hard drive problems, you're already thinking "How are you going to keep 896 drives cool enough to not raise their failure rate?"

That's where the term comes in that caught my eye: Massive Array of Idle Disks (MAID). Copan claims that their solution only has 25% of the hard disks spinning at any one time, which raises the reliability rate of the SATA hard disks they use. Presumably it also lowers the power and cooling costs to a more plausible level.

You can read Jo Maitland's write-up on the Revolution 200T at techtarget.com. One of the best and earliest technical introductions to the MAID concept is this USENIX paper (PDF document).

August 02, 2004August