High density storage system

A cooling system, comprising:

• an enclosure;
• an away of cooling plates mounted in the enclosure, each cooling plate being thermally coupled to a heat exchanging device;
• a plurality of mounting elements configured to attach to a data storage device, at least one mounting element being slidably coupled to at least one cooling plate so as to be movable between an inserted position in which the at least one mounting element is disposed adjacent a cooling plate, and an extended position in which the at least one mounting element extends out of the enclosure,
• wherein at least one cooling plate has opposed cooling surfaces, the at least one cooling plate being thermally coupled to a first data storage device via a mounting element coupled to one of the cooling surfaces and thermally coupled to a second data storage device via a mounting element coupled to the other cooling surface.

A data storage system, comprising:

• an enclosure;
• a plurality of storage devices for storing data, the storage devices being mounted in the enclosure so as to have a collective density of greater than about 100 Mbytes per cubic centimeter;
• a plurality of cooling plates mounted in the enclosure and having opposed cooling surfaces, at least one of the cooling surfaces being thermally coupled to at least one of the storage devices;
• at least one mounting element disposed in the enclosure for slidably coupling at least one of the storage devices to the at least one of the cooling plates, the mounting element having a plurality of guiding tabs configured to engage one or more rails on the at least one cooling plate,
• a heat exchanging device thermally coupled to the cooling plates for dissipating heat generated by the storage devices;
• a controller coupled to the storage devices, the controller maintaining the storage devices normally in a power-off mode and effecting transition of one or more of the storage devices from a power-off mode to a power-on mode upon receipt of a read-write request for those storage devices, the controller further effecting transition of a storage device from a power-on mode to a power-off mode if no read/write request is pending for that storage device and a selected time period has elapsed since the last read/write request for that storage device.