Military magnetic diskfiles in the avionics environment

A cost-effective method of providing mass storage in the digital avionics environment is discussed. The method provides distinct advantages over traditional magnetic and optical drives and the newer Flash EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory). This solution to the storage requirements problem involves the use of IBM commercial technology and is military-compliant using a number of FSC (Federal Systems Company) proprietary techniques. Leveraging commercial quantities for the HDA (head disk assembly) provides a significant cost advantage over an approach which designs and builds an HDA from the ground up. The ground up approach has been found to be unnecessary for meeting military requirements for digital avionics. Besides the cost advantage, this approach allows military diskfile capacities and performance to stay in step with the latest advances in IBM commercial technology. This provides a clear growth path for increasing capacities