Sony's 185 TB Cassette

[Madarius777]

Sony has developed a way to fit 148GB of data onto 1 square inch of magnetic tape found in cassettes.

 

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.

 

 

Source: http://gizmodo.com/sony-crams-3-700-blu-rays-worth-of-storage-in-a-single-1571508568?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

 

Don't see much practical storage potential for this unless they can find a way to search that amount of data faster.

[Nineshadow]

All that 4k porn...damn.

[Ryan Leech]

Repost Mania

[Madarius777]

Repost Mania

Where was it posted i used the search bar and found nothing

[Ryan Leech]

Where was it posted i used the search bar and found nothing

The search bar sucks, it's not your fault. Just use google to search the forum

[Madarius777]

The search bar sucks, it's not your fault. Just use google to search the forum

Ah thank you, sorry about that I suppose I should delete this then. 

[LaoJr]

All that 4k porn...damn.

yeah buddy what I was think about 

[stuwoac]

imagine the spectrum game you could make lol  

 

annoyho 

 

I used to use cassette back when harddrives couldnt cut it being not big enough  they worked just like drives as you have a cache sector with where the data was stored then it go read it 

 

was super noisy  but this could be set up in a box with a few heads giving you a good 150tb in your pocket would be cool 

[Anthony10]

Goddamnit it is getting easier for the NSA everyday....

 

[Geekazoid]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27282732

 

How brilliant is this?

!!!!!!!BRILLIANT!!!!!!!

[MrYuriy]

Yeah I actually saw this on another news site. Their article was slightly difference, but same basic info on the tape.

A Job I previously worked at had one of these. If I'm not mistaken, it was 48TB.

This.. This is just crazy.

[Jerakl]

His was posted like 3 days ago wasn't it?

Sorry bro, it's a repost.

[terrytek]

Wow, Sony is still hanging on to the tape.

[alpenwasser]

Wow, Sony is still hanging on to the tape.

For cheap cold storage tape is hard to beat even these days. Sure

tape drives don't really make sense for the normal consumer seeing

as they're pretty expensive, but if you have a ton of data to archive,

using HDDs will get really expensive very fast, as will optical media

(leaving out the issue of reliability with most optical media when it

comes to long term data storage).

For large data collections which are not accessed that often but do

need to be kept around, tapes still make quite a bit of sense IMO.

Also, merged threads.

[terrytek]

For cheap cold storage tape is hard to beat even these days. Sure

tape drives don't really make sense for the normal consumer seeing

as they're pretty expensive, but if you have a ton of data to archive,

using HDDs will get really expensive very fast, as will optical media

(leaving out the issue of reliability with most optical media when it

comes to long term data storage).

For large data collections which are not accessed that often but do

need to be kept around, tapes still make quite a bit of sense IMO.

Also, merged threads.

No, I just thought that tapes would be obsolete, not that they were expensive if you have a lot of data. I mean, tapes date way back to the 80's.

[alpenwasser]

No, I just thought that tapes would be obsolete, not that they were expensive if you have a lot of data. I mean, tapes date way back to the 80's.

Actually, cost is often a driving factor in determining whether or not

a technology is obsolete (or at which point it becomes obsolete). It's

not just about which product is superior from a purely technical POV,

but also very much about how expensive it is (what features and

performance you can get for what price, basically).

Tapes are not going anywyere any time soon since they offer a feature

set that is needed for a price point which is acceptable. HDDs are

superior, SSDs even more so, but both are also substantially more

expensive for large amounts of data (for small datasets an HDD solution

might be more cost-effective, since tape drives are usually pretty

expensive; only when you start archiving large amounts of data will

you make up for that). So as long as you don't need their performance,

using tape instead is an acceptable compromise.

Side note: They actually go quite a bit further back, according to

Wikipedia the first magnetic tape was invented in 1928, and they were

first used for storing computer data in 1951.

(source)

[terrytek]

Actually, cost is often a driving factor in determining whether or not

a technology is obsolete (or at which point it becomes obsolete). It's

not just about which product is superior from a purely technical POV,

but also very much about how expensive it is (what features and

performance you can get for what price, basically).

Tapes are not going anywyere any time soon since they offer a feature

set that is needed for a price point which is acceptable. HDDs are

superior, SSDs even more so, but both are also substantially more

expensive for large amounts of data (for small datasets an HDD solution

might be more cost-effective, since tape drives are usually pretty

expensive; only when you start archiving large amounts of data will

you make up for that). So as long as you don't need their performance,

using tape instead is an acceptable compromise.

Side note: They actually go quite a bit further back, according to

Wikipedia the first magnetic tape was invented in 1928, and they were

first used for storing computer data in 1951.

(source)

Yeah, but I haven't heard of a person or company who has been using tape drives for a while. Am I just behind on stuff or what?

[alpenwasser]

Yeah, but I haven't heard of a person or company who has been using tape drives for a while. Am I just behind on stuff or what?

Nah, it's just not as common as it used to be I think. It's still

important, but not as prevalent as in past years. I remember my dad

used to use tape drives for his backups in the 90s for his business,

these days we just buy a few HDDs and back up his data to that.

Back then HDDs were expensive enough that a tape drive made sense

even for such a small use case, whereas today HDDs are cheap enough

that tape drives only really make sense when you need to archive

lots and lots of terabytes.

As a reference point: A tape drive for LTO-6 (2.5 TB uncompressed,

6 TB compressed) costs about 2200 USD or more where I live, and

one cartridge costs about 80 USD.

I've done an example calculation with prices from my local retailer,

using the WD Red as a comparison, and unless I've miscalculated,

I would need to have about 150 TB of data to archive (uncompressed,

90 TB compressed) until it made sense to buy a tape drive solution

as long as capacity is the only thing being taken into consideration

(assuming I've calculated correctly ).

Even among tech enthusiasts, that's not a very likely common scenario.

And those companies who do use such solutions probably don't really

advertise them as it's not really a selling point AFAIK (what

customer cares about your tape library, after all).

So I'd estimate that's why you don't really hear about these things

anymore. Tape is still very important, but unless you work in such

a company, you're not likely to come across an actual use case.

[EChondo]

Yeah, but I haven't heard of a person or company who has been using tape drives for a while. Am I just behind on stuff or what?

 

 

Nah, it's just not as common as it used to be I think. It's still

important, but not as prevalent as in past years. I remember my dad

used to use tape drives for his backups in the 90s for his business,

these days we just buy a few HDDs and back up his data to that.

 

My father currently works for a big company in Irvine. They have 3 ways of storage.

 

1. The actual servers

2. Local tape storage

3. Off-site, in Arizona, tape storage

 

It's still a huge thing. Like you said, it's cost effective especially when you have a lot to store