The DataVault was

Thinking Machines Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer and artificial intelligence (AI) company, founded in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1983 by Sheryl Handler and W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis to turn Hillis's doctoral work at the Massachuse ...

mass storage In computing, mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting and machine-readable fashion. In general, the term is used as large in relation to contemporaneous hard disk drives, but it has been used large in relati ...

system, storing five gigabytes of data, expandable to ten gigabytes with transfer rates of 40 megabytes per second. Eight DataVaults could be operated in parallel for a combined data transfer rate of 320 megabytes per second for up to 80 gigabytes of data. Each DataVault unit stored its data in an array of 39 individual

disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...

s with data spread across the drives. Each 64-bit data chunk received from the I/O bus was split into two 32-bit words. After verifying parity, the DataVault controller added 7 bits of

Error Correcting Code In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...

(ECC) and stored the resulting 39 bits on 39 individual drives. Subsequent failure of any one of the 39 drives would not impair reading of the data, since the ECC code allows any single bit error to be detected and corrected. Although operation is possible with a single failed drive, three spare drives were available to replace failed units until they are repaired. The ECC codes permit 100% recovery of the data on any one failed disk, allowing a new copy of this data to be reconstructed and written onto the replacement disk. Once this recovery is complete, the data base is considered to be healed. In today's terminology this would be labeled a RAID-2 subsystem. However, these units shipped before the label RAID was formed. The DataVault was an example of unusual industrial design. Instead of the usual rectilinear box, the cabinet had a gentle curve that made it look like an information desk or a bartender's station.

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* {{Cite patent, country=US , number=4899342 , gdate=1990-02-06, title=Method and apparatus for operating multi-unit array of memories, status=patent, assign1=Thinking Machines Corporation Computer storage devices Thinking Machines Corporation