White Paper Cites Studies that Prove Hard Drive Failure Rates are Up to 15 Times Greater Than Data Sheet Specifications

SiliconSystems, Inc., a world leader in advanced storage technology, announced the publication of a white paper exposing the high failure rate of hard drives and providing insight into why advanced solid-state storage is a more reliable and cost- effective storage alternative. The paper, entitled "Solid-State Storage is a Cost-Effective Replacement for Hard Drives in Many Applications," cites data that indicates hard drive field failure rates are up to 15 times greater than what is reported in many data sheet specifications. The white paper was developed by SiliconSystems to educate OEMs about the numerous technical and business decisions they must successfully navigate to select the best storage solution for their application.

Quoting data presented by Google Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University, at the fifth annual USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST'07), which documented the annual failure rates of large populations of hard drives over a period of five or more years, the white paper contrasts the capabilities of traditional hard drives to those of advanced solid-state storage. The white paper reports on the competitive benefits of advanced solid-state storage technology, including enhanced reliability, performance and advanced security features.

"The fact that 50-year-old hard drive technology is failing in today's embedded systems applications is not surprising and signifies the need for storage solutions to evolve along with the applications they serve," said Michael Hajeck, CEO at SiliconSystems. "Our newly published white paper highlights the fact that hard drive technology continues to falter under many of today's OEM application requirements, and that advanced solid-state storage technology is now more than ever a cost-effective and highly reliable replacement."

SiliconSystems' white paper addresses the high cost of replacing a failed hard drive in the field and the high cost of host system or service downtime. It also covers how OEM storage budgets are becoming the dominant decision-making factor in choosing a storage solution. No longer is the price of solid-state storage a barrier to using it in many applications. Technology advances of the last 15 years have made solid-state storage more affordable than at any other time in history and well within industry-standard storage budgets.

The white paper can be accessed and downloaded from the SiliconSystems website at: http://www.siliconsystems.com/silicondrive/whitepapers.aspx.

About SiliconDrive

SiliconSystems' patented SiliconDrive is breakthrough storage technology engineered to overcome problems associated with products originally designed for the consumer electronics and personal computer markets. SiliconDrive technology is engineered to exceed the high performance, high reliability and multi-year lifecycle requirements of the Enterprise System OEM market. PowerArmor and SiSMART technologies integrated into every SiliconDrive eliminate field failures from power disturbances, prevent costly product requalifications and provide enhanced security to protect application data and data and software IP, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership.

About SiliconSystems

SiliconSystems is a world leader in advanced storage technology engineered exclusively for the high performance, high reliability, multi-year product lifecycle requirements of the Enterprise System OEM market. The company's patented SiliconDrive technology exceeds the rigorous demands of applications in the netcom, military, industrial, interactive kiosk and medical markets. SiliconSystems is based in Aliso Viejo, California. Additional company and product information is available on the company's website at http://www.siliconsystems.com/.

Source: SiliconSystems, Inc.