Every now and then I read an article or hear someone pontificating how hard drives are going to be replaced by semiconductor flash drives. While I can accept the argument that flash drives will have an important part on the next generation of computers, anyone who believes hard drives are going the way of the dinosaur should read about the Everest of digital data.
While consumers are just starting to comprehend the idea of buying external hard drives for the home capable of storing a terabyte of data, computer scientists need to grapple with data sets thousands of times as large and growing ever larger. (A single terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes and could store about 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica.)
