10.2 Magnetic Disk and Flash Storage
Magnetic disks provide the bulk of secondary storage for modern computer
systems. Although disk capacities have been growing year after year, the storage
requirements of large applications have also been growing very fast, in some cases
even faster than the growth rate of disk capacities. A very large database may
require hundreds of disks. In recent years, flash-memory storage sizes have grown
rapidly, and flash storage is increasingly becoming a competitor to magnetic disk
storage for several applications.