Sony Crams 3,700 Blu-Rays' Worth of Storage in a Single Cassette Tape

[jasonjl]

http://gizmodo.com/sony-crams-3-700-...ium=socialflow

Stupid hipster 80s fetishism notwithstanding, cassette tapes don't get much love. That's a shame, because magnetic tape is still a surprisingly robust way to back up data. Especially now: Sony just unveiled tape that holds a whopping 148 GB per square inch, meaning a cassette could hold 185 TB of data. Prepare for the mixtape to end all mixtapes.

Sony's technique, which will be discussed at today's International Magnetics Conference in Dresden, uses a vacuum-forming technique called sputter deposition to create a layer of magnetic crystals by shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate. The crystals, measuring just 7.7 nanometers on average, pack together more densely than any other previous method.

The result: three Blu-Rays' worth of data can fit on one square inch of Sony's new wonder-tape.

Naturally, that kind of memory isn't going to go in the cassette deck on your ancient boom box any time soon. Sony developed the technology for long-term, industrial-sized data backup, a field where tape's slow write times and the time it takes to scroll through yards and yards of tape to find a single file aren't crippling problems.

Sony wouldn't say when or if this new type of tape is expected to hit the market, but when it does, it'll be a victory for the old school.

[Petra_Kalbrain]

Are we going in circles while simultaneously advancing technology? Going backwards AND forward at the same time?

Bottom line though, if resolution can meet/exceed Blu-ray, I'm all for magnetic tape storage over digital/streaming options in the future.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

Are we going in circles while simultaneously advancing technology? Going backwards AND forward at the same time?

Bottom line though, if resolution can meet/exceed Blu-ray, I'm all for magnetic tape storage over digital/streaming options in the future.

It's not a playback medium as far as I can tell, it's a backup storage medium. And we've had too many examples in the past of tape deterioration, so I'd be concerned about any chemical process (although optical storage has failed as well).

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

Are we going in circles while simultaneously advancing technology? Going backwards AND forward at the same time?

Bottom line though, if resolution can meet/exceed Blu-ray, I'm all for magnetic tape storage over digital/streaming options in the future.

It is not for audio (even though gizmodo has a pic of an 80's audio tape and makes many such references), nor BD movies. This is about advancements in magnetic tapes. In the real world data centers and server farms back up the HDDs of the machines on such magnetic tapes because they are extremely cheap (per TB), reusable (if you don't mind losing the previous back up), extremely reliable (time wise) and for backup you don't care about seek time (i.e. how long it takes to find the data since as a back up you hope you will never need it, so once in a blue moon if it takes you an extra hour to restore some files it is not a big deal )

so what they are talking about is something like

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

And we've had too many examples in the past of tape deterioration, so I'd be concerned about any chemical process (although optical storage has failed as well).

tapes are way more dependable and have a much longer life than optical disks, HDDs or SST. the only real issue with tape (and why they are relegated to backups) is that they are sequential. So if you are at the beginning of the tape and you need to find something in the middle of the tape you need to rew/FF until you get to the right place to get that data. For a back up where your server died and you want to transfer all of it back from the tape to the machine that is not an issue but for finding were the solitaire program is located because you want to play Solitaire it would be an issue.

[Petra_Kalbrain]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

It's not a playback medium as far as I can tell, it's a backup storage medium. And we've had too many examples in the past of tape deterioration, so I'd be concerned about any chemical process (although optical storage has failed as well).

I understood all of that before I posted. I stand by my previous statement.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

tapes are way more dependable and have a much longer life than optical disks, HDDs or SST. the only real issue with tape (and why they are relegated to backups) is that they are sequential. So if you are at the beginning of the tape and you need to find something in the middle of the tape you need to rew/FF until you get to the right place to get that data. For a back up where your server died and you want to transfer all of it back from the tape to the machine that is not an issue but for finding were the solitaire program is located because you want to play Solitaire it would be an issue.

As just one example, we've had the problem of tape shedding on all brands of back-coated tape from the 1980s. Over time, the glue that bound the oxide to the plastic absorbed moisture and broke down, due to the chemically short molecules in the binder. Once discovered in the mid-80s, the tapes were reconfigured to use medium molecules. However, such tapes were used until the end of the 80s and when we refer to the need to "bake a tape" because it's shedding oxide, this is why.

While the problem ended by the 90s for newly recorded material, it's just one example of what can go wrong with magnetic media. In a situation where it's only used for backup and there are multiple backup cycles, it's probably fine - the tapes can be tossed after a given number of cycles. But for other purposes, I for one, would not trust my BD collection to a magnetic media. Not that locally made optical media is much better. I have found that many of my CD-Rs no longer play, for example. Personally, I think the future is going to be in some type of optical holographic storage and after I'm gone, perhaps even some sort of biological storage.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

As just one example, we've had the problem of tape shedding on all brands of back-coated tape from the 1980s. Over time, the glue that bound the oxide to the plastic absorbed moisture and broke down, due to the chemically short molecules in the binder. Once discovered in the mid-80s, the tapes were reconfigured to use medium molecules. However, such tapes were used until the end of the 80s and when we refer to the need to "bake a tape" because it's shedding oxide, this is why.

While the problem ended by the 90s for newly recorded material, it's just one example of what can go wrong with magnetic media. In a situation where it's only used for backup and there are multiple backup cycles, it's probably fine - the tapes can be tossed after a given number of cycles.

I did not say infallible, just more robust than other options. But yeah a good archiving solution would need regular checkups (and backed up in more than one location if it is worth keeping).

But for other purposes, I for one, would not trust my BD collection to a magnetic media. Not that locally made optical media is much better. I have found that many of my CD-Rs no longer play, for example.

can't imagine why anyone would want this forget anything else (be it a 50GB BD or a much bigger file). Why would anyone want all their movies on one tape can you imagine having to sit while it is FF/REW the tape to get to movie number 365 on the tape when you just finished watching movie 2014?