MAID: Massive Arrays of Inactive Disks

Storage Management Solutions Magazine
Tape like floppies is one of those technologies that just keeps hanging on. The reduced power requirements for MAID are extremely interesting, and I'll certainly be following this as it developes.

Introducing MAID
Evolving in parallel within the SATA movement is the new concept of MAID (Massive Arrays of Inactive Disks) storage. MAID is similar to the RAID concept except that in a MAID storage array, all disks (currently SATA disks) are not spinning all the time. In a MAID subsystem, many of the disks remain dormant (powered off) until requested. Power up time for SATA disks takes about 10 seconds. MAID is aimed at enabling the current SATA activity to handle an additional level of storage requirements currently being addressed by automated tape libraries or not being cost-effectively addressed at all.

See also
The Case for Massive Arrays of Idle Disks (MAID)(pdf)