Fujifilm is Working on a 400TB Archival Storage Drive

[snortingfrogs]

Fujifilm is working on a 400TB magnetic tape drive for archive storage.

 

Quote

Leaps in storage capacity are pretty common these days. However, the biggest jump in archival media storage won’t come from spinning disks or solid state drives - Fujifilm is currently working on cramming an incredible 400TB worth of of capacity onto a single magnetic tape drive.

The main type of magnetic tape storage in use today is called Linear Tape-Open, or LTO, and the current generation (LTO-8) maxes out 12TB of raw capacity. LTO-9, maxing out at 24TB per cartridge, is expected to hit retail this year.
Specifically, Fuji believes that SrFe-based LTO cartridges will be able to achieve approximately 224Gbit of storage for every square-inch of tape, allowing for the aforementioned 400TB in maximum capacity before they have to move on to another element.

 

My thoughts

While these drives are not for the average nerd (or even porn-hoarders) it's very interesting to see what can be achieved.

 

Sources

https://petapixel.com/2020/06/30/fujifilm-is-working-on-a-massive-400tb-archival-storage-drive/

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/06/29/fujifilm-400tb-magnetic-tape-cartridge-future/

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15888/400-tb-storage-drives-in-our-future-fujifilm

[Salv8 (sam)]

4 hours ago, snortingfrogs said:

(or even porn-hoarders)

this is the entire reason it is being made at all.

i will buy one and store the entirety of pornhub, rule34 and newgrounds on it.

yes.....

[Bananasplit_00]

I feel like the R/W speeds are going to be so slow the machine you are writing from is going to die before you're done

[CarlBar]

13 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

I feel like the R/W speeds are going to be so slow the machine you are writing from is going to die before you're done

 

Speed isn't the point with archival storage cheap per TB and reliable are the keys.

[leadeater]

14 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

I feel like the R/W speeds are going to be so slow the machine you are writing from is going to die before you're done

 

23 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Speed isn't the point with archival storage cheap per TB and reliable are the keys.

Tape speeds are actually very very fast, just don't try and seek/random access them or you might as well just cut your hand off.

[williamcll]

I wonder how fast it can go?

[Bananasplit_00]

48 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Tape speeds are actually very very fast, just don't try and seek/random access them or you might as well just cut your hand off.

But can it load crysis?

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

But can it load crysis?

Nope

[X-System]

10 minutes ago, williamcll said:

I wonder how fast it can go?

My LTO-5 (1.5TB raw) writes over 100MB/s uncompressed for big files 1GB+ (over 10MB/s for small files under 1MB). Max speed of LTO-5 is 140MB/s uncompressed.

 

For LTO-8 (12TB raw), max speed is 360MB/s uncompressed (900MB/s compressed)

[spartaman64]

 

21 minutes ago, williamcll said:

I wonder how fast it can go?

[Doobeedoo]

Tape is quite something. 

[Trik'Stari]

On 7/15/2020 at 1:24 PM, snortingfrogs said:

(or even porn-hoarders)

I feel personally attacked.....

[mr moose]

I still find it quite annoying that with all the tech we have today that there is no cheap long term archive media for the masses. 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

I still find it quite annoying that with all the tech we have today that there is no cheap long term archive media for the masses. 

Tape media, as well as tape drives, used to be MUCH cheaper (like several times or more) compared to hard drives about 26 and a half years ago.

 

Look at the cost per mb of the hard drives and the tapes that I highlighted, then calculate based on current prices for hard drives, what would be the equivalent for tapes?

Looking on PCPP US for example, the cheapest 10TB drive is $225, and cheapest 8TB drive is $155, so the 10TB is kinda close in price to the 250MB IDE (and is the same as the 270MB).  That would be almost like getting a 10TB tape drive for like $150 or so, and 10TB tapes for about $20.

Then there's the big kahunas (or what were, then).  There's no 80TB hard drives available today, not even for $1850, that I'm aware of.  (Also if you could get an 80TB tape drive for $925 or an 80TB tape for $59....)

 

And no, I'm not gonna be going all SSDs in my main system and HDDs in my backup storage.  I'm all SSDs in my laptop, but my desktop still has several HDDs.  (There's several things that have to happen before I make the switch to all SSDs in my desktop, and we're not there yet.)

[Master Disaster]

On 7/15/2020 at 10:37 PM, Bananasplit_00 said:

I feel like the R/W speeds are going to be so slow the machine you are writing from is going to die before you're done

Tape storage is normally used for archiving or WORM (Write Once Read Many). R/W Speeds are not the issue, its seek times.

 

On 7/16/2020 at 12:55 PM, leadeater said:

 

Tape speeds are actually very very fast, just don't try and seek/random access them or you might as well just cut your hand off.

This.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Tape media, as well as tape drives, used to be MUCH cheaper (like several times or more) compared to hard drives about 26 and a half years ago.

 

Look at the cost per mb of the hard drives and the tapes that I highlighted, then calculate based on current prices for hard drives, what would be the equivalent for tapes?

 

Looking on PCPP US for example, the cheapest 10TB drive is $225, and cheapest 8TB drive is $155, so the 10TB is kinda close in price to the 250MB IDE (and is the same as the 270MB).  That would be almost like getting a 10TB tape drive for like $150 or so, and 10TB tapes for about $20.

Then there's the big kahunas (or what were, then).  There's no 80TB hard drives available today, not even for $1850, that I'm aware of.  (Also if you could get an 80TB tape drive for $925 or an 80TB tape for $59....)

 

And no, I'm not gonna be going all SSDs in my main system and HDDs in my backup storage.  I'm all SSDs in my laptop, but my desktop still has several HDDs.  (There's several things that have to happen before I make the switch to all SSDs in my desktop, and we're not there yet.)

Not sure about those prices, might be a backup service rather than price to buy. A Sony SDT-7000 (DDS-2) single 5.25" drive was $600 in ~2000 and the Sony SDT-11000 (DDS-4) was $1100 at that same time. Pretty sure that Sony SDT-7000 was more than the SDT-11000 was back in 1993 when it was first released.

 

Unknown date but pre 1996, https://image.isu.pub/170720215858-867e7fabfeb4b525c249b470b47e74ad/jpg/page_19.jpg. What ever time that is that SDT-7000 is ~$1300-$1500.

 

Then you have to buy the tape media. So for ~$1600 you can have a DDS-2 drive and 1 8GB tape or 1 4.26GB HDD. Tape cost/value has actually gotten better not worse. Today you can spend $2500 on an LTO-7 drive and $50 on a 6TB/15TB tape. 16TB Seagate Ironwolf is $475. The significant change over 25 years as you can see is actually the HDD not the tapes.

 

For archiving it indeed was a more viable and potentially outright cheaper option to go with a tape based medium over an HDD, today tape is only cheaper at scale, large scale.

 

What's actually changed is HDD prices are way better than 25+ years ago, tape got cheaper but HDDs got more cheaper.

[Drama Lama]

On 7/16/2020 at 1:30 PM, CarlBar said:

 

Speed isn't the point with archival storage cheap per TB and reliable are the keys.

Interestingly Tape has faster read and write speeds than HDDs

 

edit : Oops someone already wrote that ignore this post 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Drama Lama

[Drama Lama]

Can’t wait to put the content of 1000 ( probably more ) cassettes on just one 

[Dylanc1500]

31 minutes ago, Drama Lama said:

Can’t wait to put the content of 1000 ( probably more ) cassettes on just one 

Which cassette?

[StDragon]

I can see the headlines soon....."Facebook, Twitter, and Google announced bulk purchasing of 400TB archival storage to help make HR departments lives easier"

 

What you post on social media stays on social media. It's like a resume' that writes itself 

[Benjy98]

Who would ever need that much storage?

[DeScruff]

18 hours ago, Benjy98 said:

Who would ever need that much storage?

One of my coworkers
People joke that they hoard things on their hard drive. Na. Ive seen worse. Ive seen a man who's drives look like a single house from an episode of hoarders. But unlike those people, this guy can keep buying more space, and he was recently asking me about a 5TB 2.5" HDD and If I could put it in his laptop...
This is JUST his desktop.

(It was worse 1 year ago)

Don't ask how many external hard drives he has. Cause I have no idea but I know its a lot.
Don't ask what could possibly be in them. Cause I have no idea but I know its a lot.
If you want to ask how much this slows down his PC (which is booting from a HDD btw). I can tell you moving all these files off the desktop to another folder shaved ~6 minutes from his boot time.