Flash Drives Bring Energy Efficiency to Storage

Solid state "flash" devices may become to disk drives what compact fluorescent lamps are to incandescent bulbs -- an energy efficient replacement.

 Flash drives -- which aren't really drives because they don't contain any moving mechanical parts -- have begun to make inroads in desktop computers as disk drive alternatives. Storage vendors are developing solid state devices large enough to host enterprise data centers.

 Startup Pliant Technology received $8 million in Series A funding to develop its Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) devices. The Milpitas, California company is led by an impressive roster of veteran storage industry executives who previously toiled at companies Quantum, Maxtor, Fujitsu and IBM. The company claims that its technology will be more responsive and energy efficient than hard drive systems

 Already in the enterprise-scale solid state storage market is EMC. According to storage vendor EMC its flash drive technology consumes 38 percent less energy than mechanical disk drives.

 The data centers that hold the Internet's information are growing rapidly and consequently consuming increasing amounts of power. Companies such as Google are looking for ways to reduce their electricity draw, making flash drives an appropriate fit as long as they have the desirable reliability and the energy savings would pay back any additional cost.