Fluidic Disk
 | This page is outdated, and might have inaccuracies or contradictions with the rest of the project. It will be updated or rewritten in due course. Please check with me before referencing this page. |
A fluidic disk is a type of fluid-state storage medium that contains a ferromagnetic datafluid. Fluidic disks trade higher expense in both storage media and drives for a system with a much higher density than magnetic tapes, but higher read speeds than a hard drive. Due to the disordered nature of datafluids, access times are random and are the same across both random and sequential operations. Writes are generally slower than reads, equalling that of a tape.
Fluidic disks are useful for write-once, read-many (WORM) applications where writes are sometimes desired; or for long-term, high-density archival storage. They come in many different form factors, such as rectangular "cartridges" or square "tapes". Devices that combine a fluidic disk and a fluidic disk drive into one enclosure are also available, known as fluidic drives; these are designed to be "drop-in" replacements for 2.5" or 3.5" disks.