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IBM and Fuji Announce Tape Storage Breakthrough

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the data-in-a-volkswagon dept.

robkill writes "IBM and Fuji have announced a breakthrough in the amount of data that can be stored on magnetic tape, a 15X improvement to 6.67 billion bits of data per square inch. IBM estimates that it will be 5 years before this hits the mass market"

3 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Death? by Ryan+Amos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When a 500 GB hard drive costs $75, can be thrown across the room and have a chance of working, weighs the same as a tape and can be easily inserted/removed in bulk with software management and barcode readers to keep track of it all for you.

    Until then, tape will stick around. I have a feeling it might be a while.

  2. Re:Death? by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I'm honestly surprised that the state of optical media has progressed so slowly though. BlueRay and HD may seem very large, but considering the size of our hard drives, I'd be happier if 5 inch CD formfactor media could store on the order of ~100GB.

    There's also some advantage in separating the storage medium from the read/write heads. If either part in a hard drive fails, you're literally fscked (except for some really expensive recovery solutions by Ibas or the like). On the other hand, you can always put an optical disc in a brand new drive. And if a disc is scratched beyond readability in your current drive, chances are you can read it with another drive in the future.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  3. half the battle by NMerriam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In my experience, the trouble is not in writing lots of data to tape, it's in reading it successfully afterwards. /only half-joking

    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.