In an age where the storage of our digital lives is getting more and more attention, it's interesting that Sony has turned to a rather old-school method for a possible solution.
Their latest endeavor in this area is a new type of magnetic tape the company is claiming will hold up to 148 GBs of data per square inch, thus a single cassette would be able to store up to 185 TBs worth of data, or roughly the equivalent of 3,700 Blu-Ray discs.
Sony officials both announced and described the technique used to create this almost retro storage solution during the IEEE International Magnetics Conference explaining that their researchers are using a vacuum-forming technique dubbed sputter deposition that involves shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate in order to create a layer of magnetic crystals. They add that this areal recording density is equivalent to approximately 74 times the capacity of current mainstream coated magnetic tape storage media.
As reported earlier by TechTimes, sales of magnetic tapes for storage are on the rise. A press release by LTO quotes research firm IDC reporting that more than 4.4 million LTO drives were shipped since they were introduced in late 2012. The same press release also cites Santa Clara Consulting Group, which says that LTO sold a total of more than 225 million magnetic tape cartridges. This accounts for more than 90,000 PB (petabyte) of information stored in magnetic tapes.
The storage of our digital lives for things like photos, videos, music and personal data is a burgeoning problem as consumers are having hard time keeping up with changing technology in this market. While this latest solution from Sony is intriguing, there are those that are quick to point out this solution may not be the perfect one for the masses just yet.
"While 185TB of storage sitting on a single cartridge is extremely appealing for people with large digital collections... it's best to remember that the storage medium of tape has never been easy access," explained Extreme Tech writer James Plafke. "Read and write times feel like (and often are) an oblivion, and tape is used mainly for safe-keeping backup, rather than because you have too much music on your SSD and want to free up space for a new game."
