Managing the World's Growing Amount of Data

When computers were still relatively new, hard drives had amounts of storage that would be considered tiny by today’s standards. As time goes on and people rely more heavily on their technology and applications grow larger, more storage is needed in order to keep up. This storage has been implemented in a variety of ways, such as external hard drives and cloud storage.  

The hard drives that come with laptops need to be small and light enough for the computer to still be easily portable, meaning that very large hard drives are not typically found in such devices. This leads to the reliance on other storage systems. However, Western Digital (News - Alert) has just released a 1TB hard drive that is the thinnest in the world at only 7mm thick. This hard drive will fit standard notebooks while providing far more storage than typically available.

Although this innovation is bound to allow more users to store all their personal data without having to buy cloud storage or an external drive, storage problems still exists for businesses. Because of the need for storage, over half of the businesses in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia have turned to the cloud.

The additional benefit to cloud storage is its ability to back up physical storage solutions, so that even if a hard drive crashes, the data stored on it is not gone. This area has also seen a lot of interest lately due to the increased need for storage, with companies like EaseUS Software specializing in data recovery for larger hard drives and many new hard drives coming with built-in protection from damage, including the new 1TB drive from Western Digital, which includes technology meant to limit the possibility of physical damage. This technology includes SecurePark, which reduces wear to the recording head, and Shock Tolerance, which, true to its name, protects the drive from shocks.