CMSC424: Database Design
Data Storage
Storage Hierarchy
Storage Hierarchy
• Cache - Super fast; volatile
• Main memory - 10s or 100s of ns; volatile
• Flash memory - limited number of write/erase cycles;
non-volatile, slower than main memory
– Intel announcement
• Magnetic Disk - Non-volatile
• Optical Storage - CDs/DVDs; Jukeboxes
• Tape storage - Backups; super-cheap; painful to access
Jim Gray’s Storage Latency Analogy:
How Far Away is the Data?
10 9
Andromeda
Tape /Optical
Robot
10 6 Disk
100
10
2
1
Memory
On Board Cache
On Chip Cache
Registers
2,000 Years
Pluto
Sacramento
2 Years
1.5 hr
This Hotel
10 min
This Room
My Head
1 min
1956
IBM RAMAC
24” platters
100,000 characters each
5 million characters
1979
SEAGATE
5MB
1998
SEAGATE
47GB
2004
Hitachi
400GB
Height (mm): 25.4. Width (mm): 101.6. Depth (mm): 146. Weight (max. g): 700
2006
Western Digital
500GB
Weight (max. g): 600g
“Typical” Values
Diameter:
1 inch  15 inches
Cylinders:
100  2000
Surfaces:
1 or 2
(Tracks/cyl)
2 (floppies)  30
Sector Size:
512B  50K
Capacity:
360 KB (old floppy)
 300 GB
Reliability Issues:
Mean time to failure (MTTF):
57 to 136 years
Given 1000 new disks with 1,200,000
hours of MTTF, on average one of them
will fail in 1200 hours = 50 days.