Massive Array of Idle Disks-MAID

MAID is an array of hard drives combined to work as a single point of storage. Scalability is therefore not an issue. At present the smallest of the Copan's available systems is 28 terabytes, nad the largest is 200 terabytes. The space used by the largest capacity array that Copan produces is just one suare metre, thus saving hume amount of space.
MAID will be used where there is a need to archive large amount of data scaling up in terabytes. It also provides quick access to large amount of data.
MAID consumes less power and hence produces less heat. This is possible becoz, when data is not accessed the harddisks go into idle mode thus making it more energy efficient. MAID allows the data storage in structured formats like SQL, MS Access and also in unstructured data formats like Word and Powerpoint.

This technology when becomes more dominant will soon replace the present hosting servers with lots of features and also we can find most of the data warehouse shifting to this new technology.
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http://www.bitpipe.com/tlist/MAID.html