Will 50 TB tape cartridges prove a boon for data archiving?

Emerging developments in tape technology will expand its density and capacity while making it more searchable, continuing to make tape more useful for data archiving rather than its traditional role as data backup.

In May, Hitachi Maxell Ltd. and the Tokyo Institute of Technology said they developed a new high-capacity tape media using ultra thin nano-structured magnetic film. The data tape cartridge features an areal density of 45 Gb per square inch, and enables more than 50 TB capacity per standard backup tape cartridge. This is 33 times larger than the capacity of current LTO-5 tapes.

The record density was achieved thanks to a new technique called the facing targets sputtering method. Magnetron sputtering methods, which are currently used to create LTO tape, cannot be used for fine composite films.

The Hitachi-Tokyo Institute of Technology news came just four months after the IBM Research lab in Zurich combined with FujiFilm to achieve an areal density that would enable 35 TB of capacity on one cartridge. The areal density for that short-lived record was 29.5 billion bits per square inch.

LTO roadmap calls for 32 TB capacity with LTO-8

LTO tape density continues to grow, too. The current roadmap for LTO extends through LTO-8, which will have a capacity of 32 TB and a data transfer speed of up to 472 MBps. That's compared to 3 TB of capacity and a data transfer speed of 280 MBps for LTO-5 tape that began shipping this year.

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Source: searchdatabackup.techtarget.com
By: Andrew Burton