IBM prepares to demo 125TB MONSTER tape

The Register ^ | 19th October 2012 12:29 GMT | Chris Mellor

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Here we go....

Store everything ....

[SkyDancer]

In ten years it'll be the size of the on/off button.

First 1gb hard drive next to what replaced it.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

They've replaced the 2400 9-track tape drives already? Up to 140MB capacity. Not even a million times more capacity yet.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Going to Wikipedia:

Linear Tape-Open---LTO

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LTO-2 cartridge

Linear Tape-Open (or LTO) is a magnetic tape data storage technology originally developed in the late 1990s as an open standards alternative to the proprietary magnetic tape formats that were available at the time. Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Seagate initiated the LTO Consortium, which directs development and manages licensing and certification of media and mechanism manufacturers. Seagate's tape division was spun-off as Certance and is now part of Quantum Corp.

The standard form-factor of LTO technology goes by the name Ultrium, the original version of which was released in 2000 and could hold 100 GB of data in a cartridge. A version released in 2010 can hold 1.5 TB in a cartridge of the same size.

Upon introduction, LTO Ultrium rapidly defined the super tape market segment and has consistently been the best-selling super tape format.^[1][2] LTO is widely used with small and large computer systems, especially for backup.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I remmeber all of that /,,,,”stuff”.

[j_k_l]

So uh how many songs will fit on it?

[Reeses]

Tape backup has a bad “track record”. It seems like half the time data needs to be restored from tape it can’t be done.

[dljordan]

” It seems like half the time data needs to be restored from tape it can’t be done.”

We always made duplex backups ‘just in case’. I also made separate backups of the user volumes which were the ones that got hosed the most by our retard programmers. :)

[Stayfree]

When I was in business school, we had a huge IBM installation upon which we loaded the software with punch cards

[TalBlack]

I cannot believe this. Serious cognitive dissonance reading this in 2012! Tape!? As in tape drives!? A tape drive is one hell of a complex close spec-ed non cheap thing! In fact high quality tape drives for Pro Audio were underwritten by sales of the high tech monster tape drives used by industry and the military. There weren't enough buyers of audio drives to support the level of R&D that produced the best drives. Can't believe anyone wants to use them for storage.

[GraceG]

Well 27TB is needed to theoretically backup a human mind, so can we backup our brains now?

[Erasmus]

Robert Klein's The Final Record Offer (Side 1, cut 1)

[Talisker]

I cannot believe this. Serious cognitive dissonance reading this in 2012! Tape!? As in tape drives!? A tape drive is one hell of a complex close spec-ed non cheap thing! In fact high quality tape drives for Pro Audio were underwritten by sales of the high tech monster tape drives used by industry and the military. There weren't enough buyers of audio drives to support the level of R&D that produced the best drives. Can't believe anyone wants to use them for storage.

Did you miss the "portable 125TB" part?

[Talisker]

Well 27TB is needed to theoretically backup a human mind, so can we backup our brains now?

That study was done on liberals.

[Lurker]

Any IT Director using tape to back up mission critical files needs to be fired.

[carlo3b]

...a... er... gee.... HUH? Wait, What?

[Lurker]

Why on earth you you need to carry that much data around with you? Back it up to a VM server with a SAN. Pull down whatever of it you need on demand.

Done.

[TalBlack]

“Did you miss the “portable 125TB” part? “

If it’s rolling tape it has to do it the way tape drives roll tape, as far as I know. That requires complexity. Tape drives at the height of their use were amazingly complex and reliable. But start, stop, FF, rewind, search beats hell out of the mech as well as grinds down the tape path. I’m abosolutely stunned that they have a present day use.

[Wuli]

Inside IBM, as well as in other computer technology firms, this has been a long-running competition between magnetic tape technology and hard disk technology. I can’t remember how many conferences and seminars where one IBM presenter offered their latest magnetic tape technology that would leap frog disk drive capacities, only to be followed soon thereafter at another conference, with another IBMer demonstrating how THEIR latest disk technology would leap frog other storage mediums.

Some songs are timeless.