IBM scientists have captured 330TB of uncompressed data into a tiny cartridge

[P4-630]

IBM scientist Dr. Mark Lantz, holds a one square inch piece of sputtered tape, which can hold 201 Gigabytes, a new world record. Photo: IBM Research

"In a new world record, scientists at IBM have captured 330 terabytes of uncompressed data — or the equivalent of 330 million books — into a cartridge that can fit into the palm of your hand. The record of 201 gigabits per square inch on prototype sputtered magnetic tape is more than 20 times the areal density currently used in commercial tape drives. Areal recording density is the amount of information that can be stored on a given area of surface.

Tape drives were invented over 60 years ago and were traditionally used for archiving tax documents and health care records. IBM’s first tape unit used reels of half-inch-wide tape that could only hold about 2 megabytes."

A cross section of the prototype sputtered magnetic tape. Image: Sony

"The magnetic tape was developed by Sony Storage Media Solutions, and the milestone indicates the viability of continuing to scale up storage on tapes for another decade, IBM said.

“Tape has traditionally been used for video archives, back-up files, replicas for disaster recovery and retention of information on premise, but the industry is also expanding to off-premise applications in the cloud,” said IBM fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou in a statement. “While sputtered tape is expected to cost a little more to manufacture than current commercial tape, the potential for very high capacity will make the cost per terabyte very attractive, making this technology practical for cold storage in the cloud.”"

"In order for researchers to achieve the 201 gigabits per square inch, IBM researchers had to develop several new technologies. IBM worked closely with Sony for several years, particularly on enabling increased areal recording densities. “The results of this collaboration have led to various improvements in the media technology, such as advanced roll-to-roll technology for long sputtered tape fabrication and better lubricant technology, which stabilizes the functionality of the magnetic tape.”"

Image: IBM

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/1...rd-uncompressed-data-cartridge-cartridge-tape

 

[natr0n]

Knowledge will definitely increase.

 

[EarthDog]

Im surprised at this, honestly. Considering the direction enterprise is going in getting rid of physical media for backups...hell, my former employer was 10-15 years behind and we got rid of our tape (LTO4) and silo over 3 years ago... even for archived data we moved it to disk.

 

[Vayra86]

Im surprised at this, honestly. Considering the direction enterprise is going in getting rid of physical media for backups...hell, my former employer was 10-15 years behind and we got rid of our tape (LTO4) and silo over 3 years ago... even for archived data we moved it to disk.

With more data, there is more cold storage, its an inevitable side effect. And if you don't cold store it, someone else will be doing it for you somewhere.

 

[EarthDog]

With more data, there is more cold storage, its an inevitable side effect. And if you don't cold store it, someone else will be doing it for you somewhere.

We didnt have any cold storage. It was backed up locally to disk and sent offsite to disk. We actually had 'instant' replication enabled so it replicated the backup data to our offsite storage just about as it was being written.

State Farm (largest insurance company - arse load of data) is also in the process of going tapeless (father in law works there in storage).

Not saying all companies are going this way, but it most certainly is a trend moving away from physical media like tape.

 

[Disparia]

Very nice.

I a load of tapes back in the day. Instead of Zip Drives, my friends and I bought IDE-based tape drive units off some auction site (eBay wasn't the only one back then). They could hold 120MB - 400MB and were priced well compared to Zips.