Bangalore: Corporate storage requirements may move from terabytes to peta bytes — that is, from a million million storage units to a million billion — but the real push in the computer storage business is coming from the small guys: the millions of individual portable and desktop personal computer users.

Home storage requirements are moving from the 120-150 gigabytes on PC hard drives to the so-called "home servers," where a central store will hold all the edutainment and home management needs of the family.

And the ubiquitous USB or Universal Serial Bus drive, that every one seems to carry on key chains, has seen pocketable storage jump within a year from a few megabytes to nearly 10 GB.

Sheer volumes

While such lay user requirements may look miniscule when compared to business needs, the sheer volumes indicate that the tail may soon wag the storage dog, feels Kumar Malavalli, chairman of the Storage Networking Summit and CEO-co-founder of the US Silicon Valley-based data recovery specialists, InMage. He was speaking to The Hindu The Hindu on the sidelines of the a 2 two-day international storage industry summit in Bangalore last week.

A key figure in the global evolution of computer storage technology — he was instrumental in helping develop what is known as fibre-assisted storage using optical fibre backbones — Mr. Malavalli foresaw corporates increasingly going for storage 'virtualization' "virtualisation," where the hardware could be redeployed "on the fly" for dynamic usage.

"I don't want to know where my critical data is stored — as long as I can get it when I want it" is the mantra, he suggested said.

Pen drives

To check out what the storage gurus in Bangalore were saying, "The Hindu" The Hindu did a quick check on the storage arena for lay users in the country. The message was clear: It is time for the rest of us to move beyond the dinky USB drives based on Flash memory that seemed to be the technology industry's favourite give away at Deepavali this year.

Basic drives that hold 64 or 128 megabytes are so "yesterday." These days, these key chain devices come with a minimum of 256 MB and can go all the way to 1000 MB -- that's (one gigabyte). Many of these are not called "pen drives" for nothing: the new models come integrated in the cap of a ballpoint pen.

Jumbo pocket drive

Seagate has introduced a jumbo pocket drive, whose USB cable unwinds like a spool: it holds a whopping 5 GB on a tiny hard disk. But don't expect to get one free this Christmas. It costs around Rs. 12,000 but it and is large enough for you to carry the entire contents of your desktop PC, including all your favourite programmes and tools. A first step towards a "PC in your pocket," it seems.

Portable scanners

The recent "Bangalore IT.in" show had Chinese and Korean companies showcasing tiny portable scanners, which come with enough memory to scan and store over 100 A-4 sized pages by just sliding the device over the printed matter.

Most of them also include special software to convert the printed text into a word processing document. These devices are already available in India for around Rs. 13,000, and as readers have discovered, this is a great way to preserve an item one sees in a newspaper, without reaching for the scissors.

Web address

Indeed, advertisers in the West have taken to including a prominently printed Web address, so that scanners like this can quickly link readers to product and pricing information. What is touted as "the ultimate handwriting capture device" is also trickling to India from its makers in Hong Kong, Thinking Group Ltd.

The Pegasus Mobile Note taker looks like a pen, and allows the user to write or draw on plain paper.

The device electronically captures and stores up to 50 pages of doodling and enables instant transfer by email or messaging. It costs the equivalent Rs. 10,000.

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