L O G I N : J U N E 2 0 0 8 Co N F E R E N C E R E P O R T S Fast '08: 6th Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies

To a storage systems researcher, all user bytes are created opaque and equal. Whether they encode a timeless wedding photograph, a recording of a song downloaded from the WWW, or tax returns of yesteryear is not germane to the already complex problem of their storage. But according to Cathy Marshall, this is only one stripe of the storage beast. There is a bigger problem that we will have to confront eventually: The exponentially growing size of our personal digital estate will soon—if it has not done so already—surpass our management abilities.