Operating Systems Management of MEMS-based Storage Devices

MEMS-based storage devices promise signicant performance, reliability, and power improvements relative to disk drives. This paper compares and contrasts these two storage technologies and ex-plores how the physical characteristics of MEMS-based storage devices change four aspects of oper-ating system (OS) management: request schedul-ing, data placement, failure management, and power conservation. Straightforward adaptations of exist-ing disk request scheduling algorithms are found to be appropriate for MEMS-based storage devices. A new bipartite data placement scheme is shown to better match these devices ' novel mechanical posi-tioning characteristics. With aggressive internal re-dundancy, MEMS-based storage devices can mask and tolerate failure modes that halt operation or cause data loss for disks. In addition, MEMS-based storage devices simplify power management because the devices can be stopped and started rapidly.