We have talked about solid state storage including how it works and the benefits of using it over magnetic media such as hard drives. By researching solid state storage companies and the progress they have made, we always thought that is would be years before major hard drive manufacturers would take the solid state plunge. Looking at solid state storage data recovery has been a priority for DTI since we rely on hard drive recovery as a main source of our business. Most hard drive recovery companies thought we had at least 5 years before the death of magnetic media.
Not So!
Last Monday Western Digital announced it bought the leader in solid state storage: Silicon Systems. They threw down a whopping $65 big ones (millions) for the company and the patents that they own. While Western Digital is a huge player in the 2.5″ hard drive market, before this purchase, they had nothing as far as solid state goes. That all changed on Monday with the creation of WD Solid-State Storage, the division filled by the acquisition of Silicon Systems.
So what does this mean to regular computer users? Solid state storage will be more reliable than magnetic media which requires hard drive recovery all the time. Solid state hard drives will probably last longer than their magnetic predecessors. The downside is when they die, there is virtually no chance for recovery because there is no way to repair anything like a hard drive. Now we do have some tricks that allow us to read solid state media when normal means fail. This will give us a leg up when the time comes for solid state to firmly replace magnetic media as the storage of choice for computer manufacturers.
With solid state storage knocking on the door, magnetic media companies, and businesses that rely upon magnetic media, had better take the long view and figure out their place in the solid state world. If you are wondering what DTI is doing, we are putting together a new product that will be launching in the next few weeks, that will be a virtual data insurance policy. This will be a necessity for those taking the solid state plunge. While it will take some time for all computer makers to embrace solid state storage, the death of magnetic media and hard drive recovery as a business is no more than 5 years away!
There’s uhm… ways to get at what’s on a chip, even if all the leads are gone and it’s been in salt water for 3 years. I’d hate to spend that kind of money, though!
So, the funny thing will be that as chip manufactures get more sensitive to making it harder to bypass the interfaces to get at protected data, the data will be getting more and more valuable to recover! At least at the moment, it seems that Flash ROMs are generally not meant to be protected at the chip level like smart cards are. Flylogic has some interesting articles that I think the people at DTI have likely already read. Good luck with your new hardware recovery methods!