The magnetic tape has the Industry’s highest Recording Areal density of 201GB per square inch. The tape is capable of handling 330GB per cartridge, fitting it easily in your palm. The conventional magnetic tape could store only 15GB data in a cartridge.
What is a Magnetic Tape?
Magnetic Tape is a medium for magnetic storage of content. It is made of a thin magnetizable coating on a narrow strip of plastic film. The Oxide side of the tape is the surface that stores information while the opposite side holds the tape together. These Magnetic Tapes started facing problems when the binder of the tape started deteriorating after certain usage, hence making it unusable. Right now, cloud storage and other storage solutions are rapidly replacing Magnetic Tape Storage.
Sony and IBM’s Magnetic Tape innovation
Sony Storage and IBM-Research Zurich, have innovatively increased the tape’s storage capacity by 20 times. The new 330TB capable cartridge has been made using cutting edge technology from both companies. Coming to innovation here, Sony has developed a special lubricant to apply to this tape. The lubricant not only reduces the gap between the magnetic tape and Reading head, but it also acts like a highly durable bond between them. Also, the magnetic tape is combined with IBM Research Zurich’s Read and Write heads, Servo Control technologies and signal processing algorithms. Apart from this, they have also put a nano-grained magnetic layer, which has resulted in longer tape length. This is how the companies have managed to achieve the Industry’s highest recording areal density. IBM fellow, Evangelos Eleftheriou said, “While sputtered tape is expected to cost a little more to manufacture than current commercial tape, the potential for very high capacity will make the cost per terabyte very attractive, making this technology practical for cold storage in the cloud.”
