Digital Asset Management

14 Disk storage and media servers

Introduction

The magnetic disk drive is the core technology underlying digital asset management. An array of the disks gives users fast and random access to the content repository. The ever-increasing capacity and read/write speeds of the drives has enabled document storage, then images, and finally video. The capacity has increased to 40,000 times the original in 50 years since the drive was developed. These advances promise to increase apace until the limits imposed by the laws of physics. We will then have to turn to other technologies.

Disk performance is increasing year on year, while the cost falls. This means that ever-larger media libraries can be online to give almost instantaneous access to the content. ...