Slashdot Mirror
IBM Prepares 100-Terabyte Tape Drives
Roland Piquepaille writes "It's a well-known fact that we're living in an era of data explosion, and that it's not about to stop. So it's not really surprising that IBM researchers are eyeing 100T-byte tape drive. Yes, you read correctly. They want to increase the capacity storage of their largest units by 250 times, from 400 GB to 100 TB. In order to achieve this goal, they're borrowing "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the microprocessor division. Today, the size of a tape track is about 10 microns. They want to reduce it to 0.5 micron -- or 500 nanometers -- in about five years. IBM doesn't really say when a 100-Terabyte tape drive will be available. But more importantly, the company doesn't say a word about future data transfer rates, which today reach a 80 MB/s. Read this overview for more comments about this problem of data transfer rates."
If anyone can do it, it's big blue. I remember when they first USB key drives were widely available from IBM. 8mb and 16mb form factors. I talked to a guy I knew at IBM, who smiled at me and told me to expect 1 GB form factors within a year. (Not that I would be able to afford them. :-) )
The boys at IBM can create anything they put their minds to. Marketing is another matter.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm sure there is. IBM (and others) spend a lot of money trying to figure out what will be hot tech in 5-15 years. Whenever this 100TB tape hits the market I would bet IBM will have found a way to make it run at a reasonable speed.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
You can do this today. Just make it hold a much bigger reel.
Unknown host pong.
Just remember that if you use tape to backup... there's a good chance you won't get a valid restore. I wouldn't bet my life on it is all I'm saying...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Tapes have never been a consumer item. They are slow (well, not too bad, but in terms of read/write speed vs. capacity). They are also hobbled by the fact that they are a linear media, and reading or writing any one thing to a tape take forever. As such, 99.9% of tapes are used by businesses to store their data, which for the most part is not pirated copyrighted material.