The next generation of high-energy physics experiments is expected to gather
prodigious amounts of data. New methods must be developed to handle this data
and make analysis at universities possible. We examine some techniques that use
recent developments in commodity hardware. We test redundant arrays of
integrated drive electronics (IDE) disk drives for use in offline high-energy
physics data analysis. IDE redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) prices
now equal the cost per terabyte of million-dollar tape robots! The arrays can
be scaled to sizes affordable to institutions without robots and used when fast
random access at low cost is important. We also explore three methods of moving
data between sites; internet transfers, hot pluggable IDE disks in FireWire
cases, and writable digital video disks (DVD-R).Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions On Nuclear Science, for the 2001 IEEE
Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, 8 pages, 1 figure,
uses IEEEtran.cls. Revised March 19, 2002 and published August 200