IBM Researchers Set World Record in Magnetic Tape Data Density; 6.67 Billion Bits Per Square Inch

MarketWatch ^ | May 16, 2006 12:01 AM ET | Mike Ross IBM

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 16, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- IBM researchers today announced they have demonstrated a world record in data density on linear magnetic tape, a dramatic indication that one of the computer industry's oldest and still most affordable data storage technologies has the potential to provide increased capacity for years to come.

The researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., packed data onto a test tape at a density of 6.67 billion bits per square inch -- more than 15 times the data density of today's most popular industry standard magnetic tape products. To achieve this feat they created several new data-recording technologies and worked with Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. of Japan to develop a next-generation dual-coat magnetic tape capable of storing high-density data.

The demonstration shows that magnetic tape data storage should be able to maintain its cost advantage over other technologies for years to come. When these new technologies and tape become available in products - projected to be in about five years - a cartridge the size of an industry-standard Linear Tape Open (LTO) tape cartridge could hold up to 8 trillion bytes (terabytes) of uncompressed data. This is 20 times the capacity of today's LTO-Generation 3 cartridge, which is about half the physical size of a VHS videocassette. Eight terabytes of data is equivalent to the text in 8 million books, which would require 57 miles of bookshelves.

"Today's announcement tells our customers that IBM has the technology to continue to improve its tape products to address their growing needs for affordable and robust data storage," said Cindy Grossman, vice president, IBM Tape Storage Systems. "With analysts projecting tape automation revenue to grow 8 percent annually through 2011, our customers are storing increasing amounts of data to manage their enterprises and to address the compliance requirements of laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Greater data density and cartridge capacity enables them to store more data in less space, helping to keep magnetic tape as the most cost-effective form of data storage."

Businesses use magnetic tape to store large volumes of important data that are used infrequently or don't require sub-second access times. These uses include data archives, backup files, replicas for disaster recovery and retention of information required for regulatory compliance. Such data are often contained within automated tape libraries where one or more read-write units service dozens to thousands of tape cartridges. High-end tape libraries can thus store petabytes - millions of gigabytes - of information. On a per-gigabyte basis, tape systems are currently about one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of today's hard-disk-drive storage systems, depending on their size. Moreover, tape cartridges consume no energy unless they are being accessed - unlike spinning disks, which need occasional use to remain operational - providing another area of potential cost savings.

IBM's record-breaking demonstration trumped its 2002 recording of a terabyte of date onto a single 3592-sized cartridge at a density of 1 billion bits per square inch. Over the past two years, Almaden researchers worked closely with Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., engineers on the development of a new dual coat magnetic tape media capable of high-density recording. The Almaden researchers also developed technologies to dramatically improve the capabilities of read-write heads and the methods for positioning the heads and handling the tape to enable data tracks one-tenth as wide as in current products. Scientists from IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory developed a new coding method that improved the accuracy of reading the tiny magnetic bits.

"This demonstration confirms IBM's continued leadership in magnetic tape technology," said Spike Narayan, senior manager of advanced technology concepts at IBM Almaden. "This is a major milestone in our program and gives magnetic tape the density boost that we gave hard-disk drives in the 1990s."

IBM has a long history of innovation in magnetic tape data storage. Its first commercial tape product, the 726 Magnetic Tape Unit, was announced 54 years ago next week. It used reels of half-inch-wide tape that each had a capacity of about 2 megabytes. In 2002, IBM demonstrated data capacity 500,000 times greater in its 1-terabyte cartridge demonstration. According to IDC, IBM was the 2005 revenue leader in the $4.82 billion worldwide branded tape drive and tape library automation marketplace.

Technical details:

IBM's world-record achievement leverages notable improvements in five areas of the magnetic tape system:

New high-density dual-coated particulate magnetic tape: Developed by Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., in Japan in collaboration with IBM Almaden researchers, this next-generation version of its NANOCUBIC(TM) tape uses a new barium-ferrite magnetic media that enables high-density data recording without using expensive metal sputtering or evaporation coating methods.

More sensitive read-write head: For the first time, magnetic tape technology employs the sensitive giant-magnetoresistive (GMR) head materials and structures used to sense very small magnetic fields in hard disk drives.

GMR servo reader: New GMR servo-reading elements, software and fast-and-precise positioning devices provides an active feedback system with unprecedented 0.35-micron accuracy in monitoring and positioning the read-write head over the 1.5-micron-wide residual data track..

Improved tape-handling features: Flangeless, grooved rollers permit smoother high-speed passage of the tape, which also enhances the ability of the head to write and read high-density data.

Innovative signal processing algorithms for the read data channel: An advanced read channel used new "noise-predictive, maximum-likelihood" (NPML) software developed at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory to process the captured data faster and more accurately than would have been possible with existing methods.

The demonstration was performed at product-level tape speeds (4 meters per second) and achieved error rates that should be correctable, using advanced error-correction techniques, to meet IBM's specification for its LTO-3 products.

(NANOCUBIC is a registered trademark of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.)

SOURCE: IBM

IBM Research, Almaden Research Center Mike Ross, 408-927-1283 Cell: 408-221-3359 Fax: 408-927-3011 mikeross@almaden.ibm.com

Copyright Business Wire 2006

[zeugma]

You can always boot with a Windows CD, and then all you need is the ASR floppy that has your disk configuration, and your backup media, whether tape or external hard disk.

Not bad if it works. I've never seen anyone successfully restore a windows box though without having tons of issues with it later (if it was successful at all) though. 

[Golden Eagle]

Check out the new image backup software, they can even do reliable image backups of RAID while the server is still running these days. I've tried Symantec LiveState, UltraBack, and Acronis True Image, which is what I use on my most critical systems. A little more bleeding edge is the "universal restore" feature of these products, where you can restore to dissimilar hardware. That only seems to work about half the time, but when it matures it will be holy grail of restores. But of course, nothing beats having a perfectly matching piece of hardware sitting there ready to go if and when the need arrises. Just make sure you order them at the same time, because even though model numbers stay the same, internal components do not!

[js1138]

The main things about restoring a RAID array seems to be the CPU and chipset, the RAID controller and the drives themselves. Adaptec controllers seem to be available forever. I have a half dozen spare drives, all purchased at the same time. Windows says the only critical thing is the controller. We shall see.

[Golden Eagle]

I've never seen anyone successfully restore a windows box though without having tons of issues with it later (if it was successful at all) though.

LOL, some do live sheltered lives I suppose. We do a test restore at least once a week, and have had to restore production boxes before. A test the other day was of an app server that had Windows, IIS, SQL and Crystal Reports running, that had taken us us about a week to setup and secure it. We did the full restore of the image over the network in 17 minutes, that time including the boot of the recovery CD.

[js1138]

I did an ASR server backup and restore to install larger drives. Worked like a charm. Other than the drive size, it was the same hardware.

[zeugma]

Yeah, like anyone on this forum would believe a word a troll has to say.

[Golden Eagle]

LOL well I doubt they believe your BS that it's practically impossible to successfully restore Windows servers at all. I can do that using the built in ntbackup.exe and have several times without much trouble.

[Golden Eagle]

The newer image software allows us to change the restored partition sizes as part of the "bare metal" restore. Just pull out the old drives, put in the new ones, initialize RAID, boot the restore disk and specify the new partition sizes. The software only restores the data blocks from the image so like tape it defrags at the same time, over our network at a rate of ~1 Gb/min. Of course you want to label the old disks when you pull them out, but we haven't needed them yet.

[js1138]

I'd love to see some software that works. Veritas cost $900 for a small business server, and failed the one time it was needed.

[Golden Eagle]

Notice I mentioned three vendors and none were Veritas. Yes Symantec owns Veritas now but their LiveState Recovery is a Symantec product more similar to Ghost. Here's the best bang for the buck though, and what I'm mostly using with great success:

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATISWin/

I first heard about it in Windows Certified magazine (which gave it a glowing review), and it is so easy I did the first full backup and restore we tried without even looking at the manual. It does allow individual file restores from inside the image as well, making it all the backup software you should need, although as a secondary precaution we do still backup to tape just in case. Check with them, they'll give you a full working copy to try out if you ask, at least they did for us, I just had to sign something saying I wouldn't illegally dupe or use long term without purchasing.

[js1138]

It looks good, but I don't really have the means to test it at the moment, and without testing an actual full system restore, I'm not likely to trust it. I trusted Veritas, and their boot CD wouldn't.

[Golden Eagle]

I don't blame you, although I can attest we do full restores with it all the time when we upgrade to larger disks, as well as testing our critical application and database server restores to the spare hardware we keep just for that purpose. We also use it to backup our VMware Virtual Machines since there can be SCSI conflicts if you try local tape backups of all the individual VM's.

Just test it on a VM, or a workstation, or next time you want to upgrade some of your hard disks on one of your servers, as you could always go back to the old disks if you had trouble. You could also test their bare metal boot up disk without actually doing a restore, it fits on either 7 floppies or 1 CD if you have a CD-R drive in the computer you're backing up, so it can get the necessary drivers. Then when the users are gone for the day or weekend boot it up and verify you can at least see your backup devices and/or your network.

If it works anywhere near as good for you as it does for us, you'll be sleeping better than you have in a long while.

[js1138]

I assume it works with USB drives. I'm not going back to tape.

[Golden Eagle]

Yes, it does, much better than the Symantec products do as they can sometimes have some sort of spanning issue when the images extends over 2Gb at least on the large Seagate USB drives we've tried. Your main concern there is if some malware comes along and wipes your local drive along with the server, then your backup is gone too. Backup to image then image to tape is what we do, which gives us the best of all worlds.

[js1138]

USB drives have to be reformatted with NTFS, or large backups fail due to their file size. I routinely backup 20 gig images to 2.5 inch USB drives. They get rotated offsite just as you would with tapes.

[Golden Eagle]

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check to see if we're formatting NTFS but I don't think so since the Acronis doesn't seem to have the problem. Backing up local does help the one main problem the image backups seem to have - corruption of the image during backup due to network issues. Doesn't happen much but something to be aware of. But, if you're backing up local, and disconnecting those drives for archive you should be in good shape.

[N3WBI3]

js,

We do bi-annual DR test on some of our systems. Server Virtulization, using products like esx/ranger (always recovering to the same hardware, no driver contention etc) has made DR so much easier for us than it would have otherwise been.