Appearing in the August 2002 issue of IEEE Spectrum, this article considers the potential advantages of adding processing power to computer hard drives. By shifting the burden of such common tasks "as searching and encryption" from the CPU to the hard drive, the author argues that significant performance improvements would be realized. Using a hard drive for more than just data storage would require some changes to existing standards, but could result in more opportunities for manufacturers. The author goes into detail about the implications of intelligent disk drives and suggests some potential useful features.