Tape storage

[Guest]

Hello everyone,

I was just wanting to know what the difference is between a tape storage device and normal mechanical hard drive. I understand that tape storage reads and writes data on a magnetic tape and is generally used for offline uses, but how can manufacturers produce tape storage devices that consist of a lot of storage capacity in such a small tape. 

[Navbryce]

Why tapes have more storage:

 

Surface area-wise, you have much more space to write on tape (imagine a huge roll of it) than on a hard disk, which you obviously just can't put into a roll. However, many interesting techniques, such as creating "steps", to increase the surface of the hard disk exist, which would thereby increase the amount of storage on the hard disk. 

 

Note: I'm not confident about this. Could be wrong

[grimreeper132]

The tape and HDDs are both in a way similar, as the tape is done by manipulating the surface, in a similarish way to a HDD, the difference is in storage speeds, cost and capacities, as a tape far as I remember can have a lot more data stored onto it, per unit volume (anit saying a unit here as everyone has a difference preference, mines cm^3) than a HDD, but the tape required to do this costs more than a hard drive, the speed is also different as the HDD spins at a high RPM and it's arm can quickly move to the desired area to read the data, where as the tape needs to move a large amount of tape (in some cases several meters) in order to get to the data, which is a lot slower which  is why tape is not used in storage on your PC at home or in most servers as it just isn't practical to do so. 

[theorangeangle]

As luck would have it, TQ made a video about tape drives. Here it is if you haven't watched it yet

 

 

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, TheBeastPC said:

a lot of storage capacity in such a small tape. 

Go unravel a data tape and then come back and tell us that that's 'a small amount of tape'.

[mariushm]

You should also watch this, very informative: