IBM Sets Areal Density Record for Magnetic Tape

digitalPhant0m writes to tell us that IBM researchers have set a new world record for areal data density on linear magnetic tape, weighing in at around 29.5 billion bits per square inch. This achievement is roughly 39 times the density of current industry standard magnetic tape. "To achieve this feat, IBM Research has developed several new critical technologies, and for the past three years worked closely with FUJIFILM to optimize its next-generation dual-coat magnetic tape based on barium ferrite (BaFe) particles. [...] These new technologies are estimated to enable cartridge capacities that could hold up to 35 trillion bytes (terabytes) of uncompressed data. This is about 44 times the capacity of today's IBM LTO Generation 4 cartridge. A capacity of 35 terabytes of data is sufficient to store the text of 35 million books, which would require 248 miles (399 km) of bookshelves."

Comments

What about write speed?

[ircmaxell]

So what about speed? What good is the ability to store 35TB of data, if it takes you a week to write/read it?

Re:What about write speed?

[the_other_chewey]

... a quick google shows present tapes take between 25-50 passes to fill a tape at ~7 minutes per pass, god that's slow.

Slow? 35TB, 50 passes, 7 minutes per pass: 1.6GB/s (using decimal prefixes of course...)
I doubt it'll be that fast in practice, but slow it isn't.

Stupid Units

[Doc Ruby]

Why bother explaining how many miles of bookshelves would be needed to hold some amount of digital data? We don't explain how long a bookshelf would have to be to hold all the data in an HDTV screenful, and 35TB data tapes are probably going to hold more graphics than text. Besides, how big is the type in the books filling that shelf? And who but a librarian is going to relate to miles of bookshelves as a meaningful comparison, anyway?

Why don't they say "a 35TB tape is enough to hold 5 million full CDs, or 7,778 full DVDs? That's a comparison that people could actually relate to, that is actually factual, and isn't just some kind of primitive awe at how efficient we've become now that we store data on something not made of mashed trees.