ALTO's Environmental Credentials

Power Saving - Archived media tend to be infrequently accessed so the storage can be offline, providing that it can be brought online quickly for Reading or Writing. ALTO uses this principle in a unique storage architecture in which each independently controlled disk can be spun-down when not being accessed for reading or writing. The Green disks used in ALTO have inherently low power consumption and are designed to support spin-down operation. This unique blend results in significantly lower power consumption per Terabyte than any other disk storage - comparable to a Data Tape library, but with the random access benefits of disk storage. Lower power consumption and heat result in outstanding environmental credentials.

Longer Disk Life - By spinning down disks that are not being accessed, the average disk life is significantly extended. A disk drive which is predominantly stopped, but exercised and monitored periodically will last many times longer that a permanently spinning RAID drive. Less frequent drive replacement offers significant direct savings in cost and indirect savings in engineering effort and downtime. From the environmental viewpoint this mean fewer replacement disks, and fewer disks to be disposed of, or recycled. Over the lifetime of an archive that's a big saving to the Business and a big plus for the Corporate Environmental Policy.