IBM and Fujifilm develop 35TB magnetic tape cartridges, unveil it in black and white
By Darren Murph 
posted January 23rd 2010 2:26AM
posted January 23rd 2010 2:26AM
SSDs may be what's "next," but seriously -- magnetic tape storage is the real heat. This darn near antediluvian storage medium is amazingly still around and kicking, and what's even more incredible is that real advancements are taking place. Just under four years ago, IBM and Fujifilm were doing the 
I WANT THIS!
To store my porn on.
@collindow
You need more than this.
@onlymyrailgun
TAPE! Epic.
@Steve Ballmer
I wonder how many macbooks you'll have to sign to get that tape
@collindow
lol;) Remeber this, once anybody brings a magnet close to a tape drive all recorded info is gone almost instantly!;))))
now they CAN make an "artificial" brain... but a very slow brain.
@JustEric
Seriously? Why did you have to bring political bias into this?
@YvesOfWinter Seriously? Did you just ask a troll "why?"
@Eugene Action on second thought, by the time SDXC reaches 2TB, then the ratio of 30TB per square inch of tape > equivalent of SDXC space per square inch... then what will all these companies and goverments do about the switchover?
how fast is it?
@Nimer55
Not as fast as my Monster Cables.
@Nimer55
the 800gb/1.6tb tapes that are around today get sustained reads and writes of around 120mb/s
@Steve Ballmer
average access times are around a minute. obviously its for backup, not for an os drive.
*also: it seems like they can actually hit about 240mb/s for the top end tapes*
@Nimer55: Depends on how good your throwing arm is.
@NoelLeeCEO
I don't know whether to down-rank you for mentioning Monster Cable on Engadget or laugh because its tru
@vlad the inhaler
its funny how your comment is the only usefully one, but it doesn't get ranked up...(the others were funny, and appreciated aswell, but it's funny how the only one who answers my question doesn't get ranked up.._
Yea in 10 Years I'm hoping for them to perfect Holographic Data Storage.
This actually sounds pretty awesome. I have two questions though -
First, doesn't tape, even if digitally encoded, deteriorate over time? Like if you watch the same VHS over and over again over time the quality deteriorates, isn't this the case here?
And second, how exactly is data accessed quickly? If you have to access a piece of information at the beginning of the tape won't you have to rewind and then fastforward to access another bit, etc...? I mean, talk about lag haha. How did they solve this?
@Yankee almost all national laboratories use Tape systems.
an example is fermilab.
http://www.isgtw.org/images/2008/tape_robot.jpg
It is actually quite a bit faster than a harddrive. plus scientist plan how they put stuff on tapes so they wont have to go back and forth between end and beginning of tapes.
@(Unverified)
You will find the same in the CERN. In Tier 0 all the data is kept in tapes for long time storage and hard drives are used only as a cache.
@Yankee
- au contraire, i hear that plastic lasts for >1K years. in general do not compare consumer grade product with something specifically designed to last for ages.
- lag time doesn't matter for archive application. if you need to save dozens terabytes of information, tapes are still most cost effective solution. and companies for some types of information have legal obligations to preserve the information. likewise in scientific field researchers want to preserve as much as possible raw information from an experiment for as long as possible as cheap as possible.
@Yankee
Consumer level magnetic tape (such as VHS) doesn't really compare to this stuff. A better comparison would be the old school 1" VPR magnetic tape reels. I worked with movies on those tapes that were 50+ years old and still in excellent condition. Magnetic tape typically lasts longer for long term storage compared to other medium.
With advances like this, magnetic tape storage will probably be around for some time. Even without advances like these, it would probably be around for some time because all the large companies still have the equipment for it. I doubt switching over to HDD's or even SSD are even worth it to companies right now. At least with magnetic tape you know of ways to help make sure the tape doesn't stick or decay.
How well does it burn though?
And it's nice for future protesters that some acetone can foil the supreme fascist council's eugenic plans somewhat.
"...your great grandchild's medical records may one day end up on something built in the year 2010. Just think about that. Think about it."
Shudder It also bothers me that my children will probably never buy a CD in their teens, and that they'll laugh at my collection the way I laughed at my mom's vinyls and 8 tracks.
"One more time" that is a daft return to the tape punk with some serious data density spunk this go round: VHS my cassette tape for this dongle of a system perfect for archiving huge quantities of data(er) for very littler greenery (perfect for the recession laden global economy). How does this storage compare in $ per Tb ratio to other technologies? ^^ IBM for refining a technology that will make the event and digital content/ creations and information from the information age even less costly to archive :)
@cosmicinglewood Cost/byte isn't the only important figure.
Even if you can burn a CD-R for a penny, if you have 8TB of data to backup, you're going to have to use 12,000 of them. Inserting them, ejecting them and storing them will be a huge hassle, even if the discs themselves are dirt cheap.
@spin cycle, actually there are robots for CD/DVD libraries too.
the problem is that CD/DVD media are targeted at normal consumers, they are not made to last for any prolonged period of time.
Verbatim is pretty much only company which tries to advertise enhancements like "AZO layer" claiming that recorded disk would last ~100 years.
@Dummy00001 That's beside the point, I know there are robots. Let's say it can remove one disc in 5 seconds and insert another in 5. You would spend 120,000 seconds or 33 hours just switching discs during your 8TB backup, that's omitting the time it takes to write the discs.
So my point still stands, it isn't just about price per byte. The value of these tape systems is not limited by the price/byte compared to the cheapest media out there.
Backup media is purchased based upon other attributes than price/byte. That's all I'm saying.
Tape seems like an ineffective step back. Plus you're really going to have mammoth sized machines turning tape?
@Comment FUcking repetitive tape fail.
I need to go to sleep
@Comment Tape costs 13c/GB, way less than disk.
This totally validates Fallout 3 technology.
@psycros
Great, all we need is something from Fallout 3 to actually be feasible. I guess I'm actually going to have to invest in a fallout shelter after all.
Reel to reel. Snicker.
Magnetic Tape: The best techno-relic ever.
Good to see researchers failing to learn from Star Trek.
Tape..c'mon, looks as durable as Paris and Nikki's panties
Storing the wild, wild world's collection of porn. Just think about it, Think about it.
Imagine making a mixtape to your girlfriend with this.
Holy God! Fit this into the next Macbook Pro and I'm in.
I was told back in the 1980s to "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pickup truck full of magtapes.".
These things are slow, they are not random access and even though this one is probably directory device getting a single file off one will take minutes and not seconds, the usefullness as a professional backup device is massive.
I just hope that they make the readers available for many, many decades since non-availability of readers would cause all the data to be lost.
I can see this replacing Blu-Ray in some distant future.
@KGB
I really doubt these tapes are practical on the consumer level.
But it is important to note that single layer Blu-Ray only holds 25GB; that means that each of these tapes could hold 1,400 Blu-Ray movies!
@dracoaffectus >> that's pretty cool, as long as you don't want to skip to that cool fight scene in chap 7 of the 1358th movie!
@AstroSeven
Imagine getting one of those tapes from Netflix in the mail with 1,400 movies on it! Thats like entire Netflix library.
@KGB
Unlikely D VHS Tapes which where aimed at consumers, could store 50GB of data and play 1080p video failed to be a success in the late 90s when DVD was announced
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-VHS
My job deals with tapes all day. This should be an interesting change.
Funny what you take away from an article. The only thing I found interesting wat that the author chose to use the word antediluvian, which implies that he is likely a creationist.
@tadghostal my kingdom for an edit button...
@tadghostal
So what if he is a creationist, would that make him a less credible author for a technology blog? Does this man's beliefs have anything to do with the production, usage, research, or relevance of magnetic tapes? I mean, while the author may have used the word poorly, the debate about evolution vs. creationism is irrelevant here.