The ability to store and process information has been essential to humankind's progress. From the early Egyptian papyrus through the Gutenberg press, the Dewey decimal system and eventually, magnetic and optical technology, information storage has been the catalyst for increasingly complex technological, scientific and societal systems.
Recent years have witnessed an explosion in storage requirements, our needs appear to be insatiable.
Many corporations find that the volume of data generated by their computers doubles every year. At the same time, new applications demand faster drives. With electronic commerce over the World Wide Web, companies need to store and retrieve customer data on the fly. In addition, businesses are deploying an increasing number of dedicated file servers for information that needs to be shared and accessed quickly by a number of employees. However, today s advanced computing systems are only marginally served by existing mass storage products, despite the remarkable advances in the magnetic and optical devices.