What's the highest density storage medium you can buy?

[MrPotatoFace]

I've been trying to figure out what's the highest density storage medium you can buy(volume-wise). I know there are 512GB Micro-SD cards available, and appearantly Sandisk has a 1TB card to. If that is true, these cards must have a storage density magnitudes higher then any SSD or hard drive, but on all the websites I've seen discussing high density storage, there's never even a mention of SD Cards. According to Wikipedia the highest density medium is DNA, but I'm fairly certain you can't run out and buy yourself a DNA-drive just yet. So what is really the highest density storage available? If you had to carry petabytes of data in a backpack, what would be the best choice? All answers are appreciated!

[TheRomanSenate]

 

On 2/8/2020 at 1:09 PM, MrPotatoFace said:

I've been trying to figure out what's the highest density storage medium you can buy(volume-wise). I know there are 512GB Micro-SD cards available, and appearantly Sandisk has a 1TB card to. If that is true, these cards must have a storage density magnitudes higher then any SSD or hard drive, but on all the websites I've seen discussing high density storage, there's never even a mention of SD Cards. According to Wikipedia the highest density medium is DNA, but I'm fairly certain you can't run out and buy yourself a DNA-drive just yet. So what is really the highest density storage available? If you had to carry petabytes of data in a backpack, what would be the best choice? All answers are appreciated!

Tapes

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, TheRomanSenate said:

Tapes

Tapes

How are tapes better than flash? You can get 50+tb 3.5 ssds and those are about the same size as a lto tape, which is about 20tb max.

[MrPotatoFace]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

How are tapes better than flash? You can get 50+tb 3.5 ssds and those are about the same size as a lto tape, which is about 20tb max.

Wikipedia says: "Sony announced, in 2014, that they had developed a tape storage technology with the highest reported magnetic tape data density, 148 Gbit/in² (23 Gbit/cm²), potentially allowing tape capacity of 185 TB."

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape_data_storage

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, MrPotatoFace said:

Wikipedia says: "Sony announced, in 2014, that they had developed a tape storage technology with the highest reported magnetic tape data density, 148 Gbit/in² (23 Gbit/cm²), potentially allowing tape capacity of 185 TB."

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape_data_storage

but that doesn't exist yet, and current flash is much more dense.

[MrPotatoFace]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

but that doesn't exist yet, and current flash is much more dense.

But if the volume of a micro SD card is 165mm3, that means you can store just over 6TB in a cubic centimetre. Doesn't that mean it would beat tape drives either way?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, MrPotatoFace said:

But if the volume of a micro SD card is 165mm3, that means you can store just over 6TB in a cubic centimetre. Doesn't that mean it would beat tape drives either way?

yea that much better than tapes.

 

current lto 8 tapes are 12tb max.

 

there also 10.2x10.5x2.15cm, so volume of 50.51cm3, so .23 tB per cm3, so thats over 26 times worse than sd cards.

[The Torrent]

12 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How are tapes better than flash? You can get 50+tb 3.5 ssds and those are about the same size as a lto tape, which is about 20tb max.

i believe samsung's 30ish tb is the biggest you can get on ssd,

 

and i'd never trust ssd for backup, magnetic even if it cant read it the info is always physically there.

 

so lets say you back it up twice on two drives, thats 3.5inches for 15tb of storage compared to tapes 20tb where your still safer,

 

then we soon to have even bigger tape storage

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, The Torrent said:

magnetic even if it cant read it the info is always physically there.

Magentic storage also degrades, so you don't want that tape to sit there forever. Also all the rated ssd wearouts listed are for end of life, so if its a new ssd they would be much better than rated.

 

If you want to archive data, you want multie drives, and check them every few years.

 

Also at the point, hdds are starting to get denser than tapes, and you need much less infrastructure to read them.

[divito]

People predicted the demise of tape long, long ago and we're flatly incorrect. The density and utility of tape is still preferred in many situations. That doesn't mean that someday, regular drives and flash won't find a way to usurp it, but it's fairly well documented that SSDs and flash are not good for long-term data retention.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 hour ago, MrPotatoFace said:

So what is really the highest density storage available? If you had to carry petabytes of data in a backpack, what would be the best choice? All answers are appreciated!

It is microSD cards. But the only reason why nobody talks about them for usage in any serious long term storage solution is because they're basically bottom-barrel flash chips so you're not getting high performance or high reliability that's suitable enough.

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, divito said:

People predicted the demise of tape long, long ago and we're flatly incorrect. The density and utility of tape is still preferred in many situations. That doesn't mean that someday, regular drives and flash won't find a way to usurp it, but it's fairly well documented that SSDs and flash are not good for long-term data retention.

Tape is used as off site backups. Keep in mind SSD's are releativly new and when they first came out their were expensive as fuck. Tape on the other hand has existed forever. The biggest issue with tape is its slow as fuck to access. Which is why its used for Off site storage incase the building explodes or something. 

[Poet129]

A usb linking to cloud storage lol...

[greenmax]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Tape is used as off site backups. Keep in mind SSD's are releativly new and when they first came out their were expensive as fuck. Tape on the other hand has existed forever. The biggest issue with tape is its slow as fuck to access. Which is why its used for Off site storage incase the building explodes or something. 

Did the OP ever state anything about speed?

[TempestCatto]

me

[Donut417]

6 minutes ago, greenmax said:

Did the OP ever state anything about speed?

No. But if you seen how tape is accessed. You would understand that its very slow. Tapes cant be used for applications where you need regulat access to data. 

[greenmax]

So then the literal highest density, whatever that is, it is, so be it.

[TheRomanSenate]

On 2/8/2020 at 1:09 PM, MrPotatoFace said:

I've been trying to figure out what's the highest density storage medium you can buy(volume-wise). I know there are 512GB Micro-SD cards available, and appearantly Sandisk has a 1TB card to. If that is true, these cards must have a storage density magnitudes higher then any SSD or hard drive, but on all the websites I've seen discussing high density storage, there's never even a mention of SD Cards. According to Wikipedia the highest density medium is DNA, but I'm fairly certain you can't run out and buy yourself a DNA-drive just yet. So what is really the highest density storage available? If you had to carry petabytes of data in a backpack, what would be the best choice? All answers are appreciated!

Mr.Potatoface why would you want to carry petabytes of data in a backpack?

[MrPotatoFace]

On 2/11/2020 at 8:20 AM, TheRomanSenate said:

Mr.Potatoface why would you want to carry petabytes of data in a backpack?

Purely hypothetical