The Death of the Hard Drive

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/09/death-hard-drive-cloud-google-chrome/?test=latestnews ^

[Red in Blue PA]

Stop worrying about when the hard drive in your computer will die. Google wants to kill it permanently anyway.

The new Google Chrome operating system, which was unveiled Tuesday, as well as hints and suggestions from Apple and Microsoft, offers us a preview of the PC of the future. And it will come without that familiar whirring disk that has been the data heart of the PC for the past 25 years.

The Chrome OS will at first be available on all-black laptops from Samsung and Acer. And because the new platform stores everything -- files, applications, data bits and bytes, literally everything -- on online servers rather than on your home or office PC, those new PCs running it won't require gobs of storage. In fact, they won't require any storage at all.

The new Google laptops come without hard drives, in other words.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Don't know how heavy this is....from linux.com:

Encrypt volumes through a cross-platform GUI with TrueCrypt 5.0

*********************************EXCERPT***************************************

TrueCrypt can create a hidden encrypted volume inside a standard encrypted one. As it's impossible to know if a hidden volume exists (hidden volume data cannot be distinguished from the random data normally filling the free space of a standard encrypted volume), this option helps you in situations in which you may be forced to reveal your password. See also Plausible Deniability in the TrueCrypt documentation.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I still have the scars from installing VM/370 for couple of customers in the 80's...One not so good....the other with more uptodate hardware loved it....didn't have to spend millions rewriting his online system...

My manager didn't like it cause he was under heavy pressure to move them to MVS...

Ugh...it really got ugly!

[gura]

I don’t need an online backup service because I have a 2TB linux NAS Box in my house that gets rsync’d to 1 of 2 external 2TB drives, with one of them offsite at all times.

Everyone else might want consider what their options are in the case of fire, theft, vandalism, or a plain old hard drive death.

[Poser]

As with many other technologies, this one will have its uses. I’ll hang on to my local storage for the time being. I’d like to be able to compute when the net goes down.

[KoRn]

"Maybe in the future ESX will be able to migrate a running physical machine to a running virtual machine."

You can easily do that now using 'VMware Converter'. You point the app at a running physical box, and it will convert it into a VM. I still don't want to use it on that particular Linux machine, because it would interrupt my uptime. Even using the Converter, you still have to bring down live and bring up the VM, which is about as quick as a reboot, but it still breaks uptime. lol

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks martin. That'll be nice. My data can go "to the cloud", which could be almost anywhere.

• China 'hijacked' 15% of the world's internet traffic
• China's Internet Hijacking: enemies re-route our internet traffic
• China's Internet Hijacking Uncovered
• Cyber Experts Have Proof That China Has Hijacked U.S.-Based Internet Traffic
• [15% of ALL] Internet traffic was routed via Chinese servers
• China's Great Firewall spreads overseas
• How to leak a secret and not get caught [2007 topic, WikiLeaks]

Almost anywhere *except* the United States.

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[killermosquito]

Or your data will be held hostage and you’ll have to pay to access it.

Or an emp will render the internet obsolete or the Chinese rootkits and other nasties will render computers useless or...

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

What happens when Googles OS gets a virus? How about when they change policies and keep your data?

Remember when the Big G tried this when they took over GeoCities? Everything on everybody's websites belonged to Google. Until people made such a stink about it that they had to back down or see their investment turn to crap.

NEVER believe that they'll keep your data safe. Your data=their property.

Godspeed