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Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

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Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#281

Post by Dylan16807 »

adrian_b wrote: post #271
Synaesthesia wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data storage is already so cheap thanks to HDDs that a poor African country can afford to spy on its population. This will hardly change anything. If we want to do something about it we have to revolt in the streets.

HDDs are fine for short term storage, but they are too unreliable when you want to keep the data for many years, possibly for a lifetime. Unfortunately, currently there is no other commercially available method of archival storage, except magnetic tapes. Optical storage has a too low density to be able to compete with magnetic tapes.

That presumes you're putting the data in cold storage somewhere. For data that's being kept accessible, the reliability of a hard drive doesn't matter. It's transferred from RAID to RAID over time. And spy data is probably in warm storage.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#282

Post by Dylan16807 »

paulmd wrote: post #277
ddingus wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I had no idea tape was being pushed to these levels! Crazy good tech accomplishment right there. In a way, I am somehow comforted. Tape remaining relevant kind of dropped off my radar. Good to see. 317Gb / square inch AND 15km/h transport speed? That is nuts fast. Wonder how robust it really is? Of course at those densities and potential transfer rates there is ample room for error recovery.

It has never really entered the public consciousness since it's not a consumer-facing technology but tape development has continued apace. LTO-9 should be hitting the market very soon and supports up to 45TB per tape (compressed capacity, 18TB raw). Not quite sure where IBM's numbers here come from, their previous numbers don't match up to the progression of the LTO tape series' capacity. Maybe they are citing "resea…

> LTO-9 should be hitting the market very soon and supports up to 45TB per tape (compressed capacity, 18TB raw).

LTO is cool and all but is the "compressed capacity" number really something to repeat with a straight face? The tape holds 18TB, we don't need to pretend it's anything else.

> But certainly tape has continued to progress much faster than most people would have imagined.

Mostly it has. But I'm somewhat worried about the future after the sudden late-game announcement that LTO-9 would have a 50% capacity improvement instead of the usual doubling.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#283

Post by samstave »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #281
adrian_b wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDDs are fine for short term storage, but they are too unreliable when you want to keep the data for many years, possibly for a lifetime. Unfortunately, currently there is no other commercially available method of archival storage, except magnetic tapes. Optical storage has a too low density to be able to compete with magnetic tapes.

That presumes you're putting the data in cold storage somewhere. For data that's being kept accessible, the reliability of a hard drive doesn't matter. It's transferred from RAID to RAID over time. And spy data is probably in warm storage.

Nope.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#284

Post by wazoox »

webmobdev wrote: post #84
wazoox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built such a cloud service; you can archive the data uploaded on our cloud storage to tape on demand, and we'll send you the tape back when requested (you basically buy the tapes once, and they're yours, no string attached). It failed to gain any traction, though.

Sounds like a good idea. But I am guessing it failed as it wouldn't be attractive for common folks because, while the tapes might be affordable, tape drives are really expensive and uncommon.

In fact the service is tentatively targeted to content producers. Most post-houses do have LTO drives (it's a requirement to work with NetFlix among other to archive to LTOs). The idea is that any content owner can bring their tapes to the post house when needed (where they would actually use it) instead of USB disk drives.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#285

Post by wazoox »

tomcam wrote: post #102
wazoox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built such a cloud service; you can archive the data uploaded on our cloud storage to tape on demand, and we'll send you the tape back when requested (you basically buy the tapes once, and they're yours, no string attached). It failed to gain any traction, though.

First off, mad props for building out the service. That was an ambitious idea and I’m sorry it didn’t take off. Second, if you ever write a blog or article about it someday please mention it on hacker news.

OK, maybe we'll try to relaunch it then :)

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#286

Post by jabl »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #282
paulmd wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has never really entered the public consciousness since it's not a consumer-facing technology but tape development has continued apace. LTO-9 should be hitting the market very soon and supports up to 45TB per tape (compressed capacity, 18TB raw). Not quite sure where IBM's numbers here come from, their previous numbers don't match up to the progression of the LTO tape series' capacity. Maybe they are citing "resea…

> LTO-9 should be hitting the market very soon and supports up to 45TB per tape (compressed capacity, 18TB raw). LTO is cool and all but is the "compressed capacity" number really something to repeat with a straight face? The tape holds 18TB, we don't need to pretend it's anything else. > But certainly tape has continued to progress much faster than most people would have imagined. Mostly it has. But I'm somewhat wor…

> LTO is cool and all but is the "compressed capacity" number really something to repeat with a straight face?

No, but it's been the standard in the tape industry for decades. Probably dates back to the first tape controllers that had builtin compression (so compression didn't tax the main cpu).

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#287

Post by Dylan16807 »

adrian_b wrote: post #273
daRealDodo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Data on the tape is stored at a record-breaking density of 317 gigabytes per square inch Me wondering about those micro SD cards that can store 1Tb.

The density of flash memory is competitive with magnetic tapes, but the retention time is too low, making flash memory completely unusable for archival storage, even if it would have been as cheap as magnetic tape. In theory, write-once memory cards, using some kind of antifuses, could be designed to have a lifetime good enough for archival storage, but nobody has attempted to develop such a technology, because it is…

> The density of flash memory is competitive with magnetic tapes, but the retention time is too low, making flash memory completely unusable for archival storage, even if it would have been as cheap as magnetic tape.

I disagree that it's unusable. You'd end up with a puck the size of a data tape that can archive a petabyte of data and needs to be plugged in to a 5 watt power supply for long term storage. That's not super onerous. Then consider that tapes need to be stored at exactly room temperature with 20-50 percent humidity, while this puck would barely care about environment at all. And you could plug it directly into a computer without a $5k drive. Honestly it sounds pretty good to me. We just need to drop the price of flash by a factor of 20 to make the scenario happen.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#288

Post by Dylan16807 »

samstave wrote: post #283
Dylan16807 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That presumes you're putting the data in cold storage somewhere. For data that's being kept accessible, the reliability of a hard drive doesn't matter. It's transferred from RAID to RAID over time. And spy data is probably in warm storage.

Nope.

Help me out here; which part are you saying nope to?

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#289

Post by [deleted] »

sedatk wrote: post #136

I'm more interested in the lifetime of the medium. Durable backup media for consumers is still a holy grail as I understand. M-DISC didn't hold up to their 1000 year lifetime promise. Archival-grade DVD's are also not good enough as I understand. Syylex went bankrupt. I want a consumer-grade backup medium that can provide at least a 100 years of lifetime. That said, I was able to recover 90% of the voice recordings m…

[deleted]

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#290

Post by crististm »

userbinator wrote: post #210
elorant wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lifetime of the medium is half the equation. The biggest problem imho is the lifetime of the device. Say I give you an old floppy drive for 8" floppies from the seventies. Where would you connect it?

Floppies are an interesting case because the protocols and physical specifications are all documented publicly, which means that one could literally build a drive from scratch today --- the trickiest part being the heads, but considering that they are many orders of magnitude lower density than HDDs, it would not be a big obstacle in the future. (I believe 8" floppy drives have the same interface as 5.25" ones --- an…

I have hobby books from 30 years ago that teach you how to build magnetic heads for cassette tapes. No pictures or anything but with enough patience you definitely can build one today, at home (even then). Mind you, the size of the gap is not that big of the problem if you put your mind at polishing.
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