This New "Ruler" SSD Has Enough Storage to Hold 300,000 HD Movies

Intel is literally changing the way storage looks. The tech giant introduced a new enterprise SSD design called the “ruler”. The new slim line drive reportedly optimizes storage density whilst reducing the required amount of cooling and power. While the full specification details of the new drives haven't been released yet, Intel says they will be able to reach 1 petabyte (1000 terabytes) of storage in a single 1U server rack (the smallest size rack available).

New drive has capacity for 300,000 HD movies

To put that into perspective, traditional 10TB 3.5-inch hard drives would require a dramatically larger 4U rack. If you had 1 petabyte of data at home you’d be ready with roughly enough storage for 300,000 HD movies, or enough content to keep you entertained non-stop for about 70 years.

[Image Source: Intel]

While these drives are for now, exclusively for the enterprise market, one day this super thin storage designs could make their way into our desktop computers.  

Enterprise storage is a broad term that generally refers to products and services that assist large organizations to save and retrieve data. Companies often choose between on-premise storage solutions and external cloud computing service. This is necessary to be compliant in some industries, but can also be costly to maintain and manage.

External cloud computing services are generally more flexible and can cut costs as you may only pay for what you use rather than the maintenance of a whole system. A relatively new approach is a combination of the two solutions that satisfy compliance while offering a more flexible and cost effective way to store commonly updated data.

On premises, enterprise storage needs careful monitoring and maintenance to ensure the integrity of the data. Cooling and power usage are two high ongoing costs. Cloud based storage is generally much simpler and requires just making the choice as to who will manage your data and then work with them to sync the cloud to your existing applications and networks.

Storage industry

Storage is a massive industry that continues to grow each year as storage demands and innovation increases. Storage related startups have been the target of huge funding rounds in the last few years. It is estimated there has been more than a billion dollars per year has been invested in enterprise storage start-ups for the last three years. Simon Robinson, a research vice president for storage and information management with 451 Research, says "You get these waves of startups". He adds, "As soon as you think the industry is done with storage, along comes another wave. It's been a constant cycle of innovation in the last decade."

Eyes will be on Intel as the “Ruler” will be released in the next few months.  

Sources: Intel, Fortune

SEE ALSO: The Future of Storage: The World’s First 1000GB SD Card