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Storage Media Characteristics

Different storage technologies (magnetic disk, flash, persistent memory) have fundamentally different performance profiles, and optimal data structures and access patterns vary accordingly.

Tension Addressed

Sequential vs. Random Access Optimization

Recognizable As

HDD vs SSD optimizations, wear leveling considerations, NAND flash constraints, tiered storage architectures, storage-specific tuning parameters

Canonical Sources

Agrawal et al., "Design Tradeoffs for SSD Performance" (2008); Caulfield et al., "Understanding the Impact of Emerging Non-Volatile Memories on High-Performance, IO-Intensive Computing" (2010)

Transfers To

Database storage engine selection, embedded systems design, cloud storage tier selection

Sub-concepts: - Mechanical seek: HDDs have millisecond-scale seek penalties, making sequential access critical - Flash asymmetry: SSDs have fast reads, slower writes, and wear/erase constraints affecting write patterns - Wear leveling: Flash memory has limited write cycles, requiring distribution of writes across cells