Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm, tape drives aren't even sold anymore, otherwise I might try.
It may not be a bad idea to borrow old tape-drive ideas for modern technologies - I mean, hard drives are ever slower compared to cache or RAM, and they are faster at linear seeks (like tapes) than random-access. Hard drives are the new tape?
Tapes are the new Hard Drive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape_File_System
A Random Access Filesystem that runs on LTO5. (And it even supports OSX!) Cool hack. Just don't ask me why they bothered.