Maybe it’s because I am not much for celebrating anniversaries, especially those related to unanimated objects, but isn’t all the hubbub around the disk drive hitting the big five-o getting annoying?The disk drive was a clever invention, I won’t deny that, but so were others. Did anyone ever throw a party for, say, the fiftieth of the printer? Well, seems to me that printers predate disk drives in the computing ecosystem but got no party.What about monitors, or keyboards or modems? Aren’t those machines at least equally important, not to mention more reliable, than disk drives, those irritating recycling bins for bits of data?Sure, computer memories based on disk drives (we call that storage now) provide open-ended capacity and quick access, but what about persistence? Among all media the disk drive is one of the least reliable for long term storage, unless you do recurring re-fresh cycles on newer drives, but that’s like cheating, isn’t it? We know that paper can survive centuries, in fact our museums have many examples of precious antique books still in perfect shape. However we cannot entrust important data to our spinning friends, not even for a few seconds without taking special precautions.So, why do we celebrate such a poor performer? Is this becoming a way of life these days? Celebrating failure, I mean.Perhaps because, if I stop pretending to be naive for a second, an 800 pound gorilla like IBM can claim paternity of this much discussed child? Well take a look at that first baby. Not so pretty, don’t you agree? In fact, the only reason I am publishing this link is to prove a birth date, September 4, 1956 according to ma’ IBM, which is coincidentally also my birth day, but not on the same year, mind you.Could another reason for this disk celebration craze be that although Big Blue is no longer deeply involved in filling planet Earth with disk drives, their prestigious research labs are still trying to make a better trap for bits of data?The answer to both questions is obviously yes. In fact, as part of the celebrations last week IBM invited reporters to a day long event titled: “The future of storage” at the Almaden Research Center in California. The event’s main course was an interesting peek at current research topics. It’s difficult not to get excited at the promise coming from those technologies.Take, for example, SCM (Storage-Class Memory) a solid-state alternative to disk drives (and flash memory) with faster access, better reliability and less draining power and cooling demands than today’s spinning devices. Look ma’, no moving parts!Gian-Luca Bona, department group manager of Science & Technology at Almaden explains how the cost of any memory medium is directly affected by the size of the bit cell, where larger equals more expensive. Trying to compete with the density of magnetic media is just one of the many challenges that researchers are facing. According to Bona, Storage Class Memory could become ready for mass production in just a few years, but he is quick to add that other, non-technical factors come into play when a possibly disruptive technology like this pops up from the labs.I’ll keep a bottle of champagne ready for when the disk drive will finally find its match. Considering that many of the storage problems that we face today are more or less directly related to the characteristics of the disk drives, I for one will celebrate when we will finally turn page.That celebration won’t happen soon, I am afraid, and we will continue to pile up disk drives and their problems for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, I hear from Seagate that the storage areal density has just reached 421 gigabits per square inch, a new record. I used to get excited at these announcements but I can’t now: Aren’t we just feeding our addiction to larger and more troublesome disk drives?