New Sony 185TB cassette news article

[premiumcapture]

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/4/568...-cassette-tape

Interesting how you could fit over 3,000 VHS lossless caps onto a single cassette, makes you look at how tech has evolved.

Quote:

Cassette tapes may have faded into oblivion long ago, but magnetic tape storage still has a key role to play behind the scenes. Extremely high density tapes are used by corporations and government agencies for archival purposes because they're cheaper, more power efficient, and more reliable than disk-based storage. And now Sony has achieved an incredible storage capacity of 18.5GB per square inch with its latest magnetic tapes — over five times the record set in 2010 by IBM, and 74 times greater than tapes typically used in archival storage today (like the one pictured above). With that kind of density, one small data cartridge can hold a monumental 185TB of data, though Sony hasn't commercialized the technology yet. Nevertheless, that's not too shabby for a storage medium that's been around for over 60 years.

[DeeSeven]

ill take a few of those please

[TylerDurden389]

Anyone hoping this thing gets in the marketplace quickly so the old hard drives, and possibly the SSD's drop in price considerably in the near future? Or am I totally off with how the market works in this regards? lol

[Belmont]

AFAIK, tape storage isn't meant for random-access data like SSD's. It's meant as an archival format, which is meant to hold or copy data.

[lordsmurf]

Have you ever restored a tape backup? It takes a really, really long time and is NOT fun. There's a reason people more often opt for extra hard drives or discs! I bet the 185tb tape is a product that nobody asked for.