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220TB Tapes Show Tape Storage Still Has a Long Future

Posted by Soulskill on from the 11.73-libraries-of-congress-per-pony dept.

alphadogg writes: IBM and Fujifilm have figured out how to fit 220TB of data on a standard-size tape that fits in your hand, flexing the technology's strengths as a long-term storage medium. The prototype Fujifilm tape and accompanying drive technology from IBM labs packs 88 times as much data onto a tape as industry-standard LTO-6 systems using the same size cartridge, IBM says. LTO6 tape can hold 2.5TB, uncompressed, on a cartridge about 4 by 4 inches across and 2 centimeters thick. The new technologies won't come out in products for several years.

15 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. LHC Too by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They use tapes to store all that data they get from smashing tiny bits together. Totally forget how much one of their tapes hold, but at the time I remember thinking it was a lot.

    1. Re:LHC Too by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

      LHCs tape archive is stored in the closet next to the superconducting magnet.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:LHC Too by americanpossum · · Score: 3, Interesting

      From http://cerncourier.com/cws/art...

      The current candidates for the tape drives that will record LHC experimental data are the enterprise-class drives from IBM and Sun StorageTek. These are the IBM 3592 EO5, which has a native data rate of 100 MB/s; and the Sun StorageTek T10000, which has a native data rate of 120 MB/s. Both of these drives use a 500 GB capacity cartridge.

      The interesting thing is that the LHC can generate up to 6GB of data per second, which means that even a 500GB tape will only last for 83 seconds. It's good that they've got all of those robots handling these tapes.

  2. Never consumer ready by BenJeremy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wake me when tape is reliable AND costs 10% of the $/GB of hard drive storage.

    Worthwhile for enterprise... maybe. I haven't even looked at a tape backup in decades, but I do not relish paying more for a single tape than an entire 2TB HDD... as a consumer, or even as an enthusiast. It's cheaper and possibly more reliable to do backups to BD-R at this point, or simply use redundant HDDs as backup devices.

    1. Re:Never consumer ready by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Tape backups have been an enterprise only product for years. And they are backing up enterprise (server-grade) hard drives that cost substantially more than consumer SATA drives.

    2. Re:Never consumer ready by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even enterprises are using a lot of SATA drives now. The super-fast-and-reliable niche that used to belong to enterprise drives has gone to flash. It's usually cheaper to use consumer drives and some better software to manage the inevitable failure than to use enterprise drives.

    3. Re:Never consumer ready by americanpossum · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you don't need to store tremendous amounts of data or to keep this data in more than a dozen different places, spinning hard drives will do just fine.

      If you need to store petabytes of data in redundant locations, tape robots are your friend. ;-)

    4. Re:Never consumer ready by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As far as I can recall, tape backup systems have never been a consumer product. At least, I don't recall tape systems ever being marketed that way.

      I think the big difference nowadays though, is that tape backup used to be the only real viable option for small business' computers and servers. Nowadays, it seems like cloud-based backups like Amazon Glacier are a much more sensible for smaller systems.

      BTW, redundant HDDs as a backup system is a really bad idea unless you:

      a) take them offline, and
      b) store them offsite.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    5. Re:Never consumer ready by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's usually cheaper to use consumer drives and some better software to manage the inevitable failure than to use enterprise drives.

      There is NO difference in reliability between "consumer" and "enterprise" drives. The only reason to buy enterprise drives is because you have excess money that you are too stupid to keep. All the big storage companies use consumer grade drives, and several of them, including Google and Backblaze, have published data that clearly show there is no reliability or performance reason to buy "enterprise" drives. They are a scam.

    6. Re:Never consumer ready by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      RED drives are specifically designed for RAID enclosures to prevent early failure due to vibration and constant sleep/wake cycles.

      Baloney. If this were true, it would show up in reliability data. It does not.

      Sure in some situations you can get by with regular consumer gear, but in other situations it's asking for trouble.

      Thanks for the advice. But I prefer to listen to people that know what they are talking about, and have data to back it up.

      Btw, I have some super premium gold plated SATA cables that will DOUBLE the reliability of your enterprise drives!!! Please post your credit card number and address.

  3. WORN by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Write Once Read Never

  4. Re:more interesting question by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What is the write speed of this technology ?

    Back in the early 80's I had a job working at night watching the network of the then-new ATMs, and restarting them when they crashed (often). It was a time-sharing place with big mainframes and giant spools of tape. The write speed on those was horrible, partly because first you had to wake up the invariably dozing tape hanger, who would then stumble over, find the proper tape, and put it on the spool.

  5. Capacity isn't the problem. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "...The new technologies won't come out in products for several years."

    Er, several years?

    For a minute there, I thought they were referring to the restore time for a full cartridge.

    Capacity isn't really the problem with tape media. It's sitting around waiting for ages if you ever have to actually execute a full restore of that much data from tape.

    Not quite sure why it remains a viable solution for that reason alone, especially in this era of the InstaTwitterVine level of instant gratification. Spinning rust in the cloud might be a bit more volatile, but it will likely always be a hell of a lot faster.

    1. Re:Capacity isn't the problem. by TheGavster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      These guys http://hardware.slashdot.org/s... probably would have preferred to be able to come back up after some number of days, rather than ever. That said, not all losses of data are total, so it might make sense to have a tape system for catastrophes and some other system for correcting a smaller mistake.

      --
      "Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
  6. Queue the Parochial Comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "I don't understand why anyone would use tape. After all I've never used it/not for years/etc."

    If you feel the urge to say words like this, just stop after the first 3 words. You don't understand. That's enough right there.

    Some people have volumes of data that you cannot fathom. Some organizations have use cases that you haven't encountered. Maybe even some organizations make decisions that' could be handled another way, and maybe that different way might be better too. But's that's speculative based upon NO information.

    The continuing demand for tape pretty well speaks for itself though.