Posted on 05/01/2014 3:05:50 PM PDT by MNDude
Once upon a time, the best way for you to back up the entirety of your computers data was to use the medium that was once the best way to listen to music: magnetic tape. Writable optical media, cheap hard drives, and cloud storage eventually became the consumer norm, but tape drives still hung around as one of the best options for mass data backup. Sony has developed a new technology that pushes tape drives far beyond where they once were, leading to individual tapes with 185 terabytes of storage capacity.
Back in 2010, the standing record for how much data magnetic tape could store was 29.5GB per square inch. To compare, a standard dual-layer Blu-ray disc can hold 25GB per layer this is why big budget, current-gen video games can clock in at around 40 or 50GB.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
NSA probably is buying their stock on this.
I hope TEAC has a capstan mod kit for 0.00000002793967723846435546875 ips.
"Finally, enough storage for my porn stash!"
The article uses a bad example, Blu-Ray, for comparison. Blu-Ray is not serious used in enetrprise backup and archiving.
The article SHOULD have compared the storage capacity to existing tape and magnetic disc drives. It still comes out really well.
For instance, the highest capacity hard drive I know of is 6TB. With compression, maybe 10TB. Most enterprise drives hold much less.
The current generation of LTO tape drive, LTO-6, holds only 2.5TB uncompressed.
The amount stored is so massive that rather than having shelves of hundreds of tapes, a handful will be all that is needed.
HOWEVER: since it is such a massive amount, and tape is sequential, not random access, restores may be negatively affected. Also, while a typical big league tape library may have a dozen or more tape drives spinning (IBM 3584), only having one take the place of all of them may interfere with backup windows, unless the drive (and its interface) is fast enough to keep up.
Party pooper!
And let’s not forget that tape is not a permanent storage medium. It will degrade eventually.
Will the tapes plant a boot sector trojan virus when used? Sony did that before with their music CDs.
I helped develop an optical Blu-Ray wavelength Tape system for Sun just before they were purchased by Oracle. There was a lot of IP filed around it. They shelved the program shortly after the purchase.
Wonder if Oracle sold the IP to Sony or if it came out of their own lab.
Or restored?
I read the article again, Sony’s solution is magnetic not optical.
Nevermind
I miss 1600/6250 tapes for my AS400.
Hell...I was impressed with the 64g flash drive I bought yesterday.
I need this for my copies of Gilligan’s Island and Hogans Heroes
That’s a lot of pr0n.
...What is that, now you can “own every John Wayne movie ever made..on one disc!”
Don’t know if you still work with the platform but the IBMi on IBM Power systems are phenomenally fast...
Maybe we’ll come full circle to wax phonographic storage cylinders.
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