Digital Asset Management, 2nd Edition

14 Disk Storage and Media Servers

Introduction

The core technology underlying digital asset management is the magnetic disk drive. 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. In the 50 years since the drive was developed, the capacity has increased to 40,000 times the original. These advances promise to increase apace until they reach 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 ...