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When it comes to magnetic tape, many of you may consider it to be a past technology because you are familiar with audio and video cassette tapes. Although you may wonder why we are talking about magnetic tape in this digital society, the fact of the matter is that magnetic tape has numerous advantages as a digital data storage medium compared to hard disks and optical disks. It is now in the global spotlight as a medium that is proven to have a recording density equivalent to 220TB per cartridge using cutting-edge technologies.
Why Is Magnetic Tape in the Spotlight?
Magnetic tape has a lot of advantages. First, it can store data for a long time. While the life of a hard disk is said to be several years, magnetic tape can maintain its performance for more than 30 years if conditions are met. Second, the coated type magnetic tape is relatively inexpensive because it can be produced quickly and continuously in a wide width. Third, the tape storage system consumes power only during recording and retrieval, enabling the energy-saving operation. And lastly, since data can be moved and stored in a different location from the main server, it is less affected by a system failure, disaster, or other accidents.
Structure of Magnetic Tape
Magnetic Tape Optimal for Archiving
In modern times, when businesses are being developed globally, the data volume is growing dramatically year by year and needs for archiving data are increasing more and more. We consider data storage and management using magnetic tape to be the best method of archiving. The ratio of the archiving cost between the tape environment and the HDD environment is estimated to be 1:23, and the power consumption ratio is 1:290.
In addition, archiving on tape is not only low cost, but it also has several advantages that the HDD environment does not have: its potential and reliability are high, it is easy to move across multiple locations and expand its capacity, and it supports WORM (Write Once Read Many) protection and encryption technologies.
When it comes to magnetic tape, you may consider it to be a past technology because you are familiar with audio and video cassette tapes. However, magnetic tape has a lot of advantages as a digital data storage medium compared to hard disks and optical disks.
The recording capacity of magnetic tape is determined by its recording area multiplied by its areal recording density. Compared to HDDs whose recording size(density) has almost reached the physical limit, the recording density of magnetic tape is still low and has room to expand. Magnetic tape is still evolving, with the aim of achieving a higher capacity.
