Platter-based hard drives, flash-based solid state disks, and even high-density optical discs have largely replaced the ol' magnetic tape cartridge. But contrary to popular belief, they're not dead. Magnetic tapes are still used for long-term storage and archival purposes.
According to IT World, Sony just developed a new magnetic tape material that could lead to tape cartridges capable of holding 185 terabytes worth of data. Repeat: that's a 185 terabytes of data in a tape, or 148 gigabytes per square inch — 74 times what standard tapes hold.
Not relating? Maybe this will help: 185 terabytes is equivalent to about 3,700 Blu-rays. Just imagine storing that many Blu-rays on a single cassette tape. Getting the picture now?
IT World explains the science behind the new high-capacity tapes:
"To make the new recording material, Sony used a kind of vacuum thin film-forming technology called sputter deposition. The process involves shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate, which produces layers of magnetic crystal particles.By tweaking the sputter conditions and developing a soft magnetic underlayer on the film, the manufacturer was able to create a layer of fine magnetic particles with an average size of 7.7 nanometers."It was only two years ago, we were geeking out over IBM and Fujifilm developing 35 terabyte cassette tapes. Then IBM went and made a monster 125 terabyte single-tape drive. A jump from 35TB tapes to 185TB tapes in two years? That's pretty ridiculous (in a good way).
When can we expect to see Sony's 185TB cassette tapes in the home? Probably never. As I mentioned earlier, most cassette-based storage are meant for data archival in data centers. Regular people don't really uses tape storage anymore. And you'll probably never ever see a magnetic data tape unless you work in the IT for the government or a megacorporation. For now, you're better off just waiting for those 1TB SSDs to drop in price.
Sony, via IT World
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