Throwback Thursday: Sony's 185TB Cassette Tape Could Store 47 Million 80s...

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2014-05-08T17:33:07Z

Earlier this week, when I talked about SanDisk's mind-blowing 4TB enterprise solid-state drive, I remarked that such storage densities still impress me, SSD or not. This is especially the case when I look back five years or more - the progression has been unbelievable. Perhaps more unbelievable though is Sony's latest magnetic storage technology, which could allow a storage device close to the size of a standard cassette to store up to 185TB.

Yes, I said cassette. This is quite a feat for such an 80s technology.

As the title of this post suggests, 185TB is enough to house 47,000,000 music files. Further, it's also enough to store 3,700 full-size 50GB Blu-ray discs, and over 19,000,000 10MB photos. And yes, since we're all clearly thinking it, it could also hold a lot of adult material.

Thanks to Sony's advances, this latest technology is able to store 72x as much data per square inch - so much, it puts current mechanical storage to shame. The main reason Sony's been able to make this happen is by allowing the crystals sputtered out by the deposition process to lay far more uniformly, and with less variation in size.

While this kind of storage sounds amazing as a home user, these tapes are definitely not bound for us. Instead, they're targeted at the enterprise and government, where storage density and security is far more important than performance. Even so, this kind of capability is hard to not drool over. Sony hasn't announced a launch date yet, as it still needs to refine things.

You might recall that just earlier this year, Sony and Panasonic jointly announced Archival Disc, an optical format that could result in 300GB+-sized discs. Like this tape storage, Archival Disc isn't being targetted at regular consumers either. Bummer.

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KyleChessman
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2014-05-08T18:05:44Z

They should bring back MiniDisc

Rosec14
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2014-05-08T18:27:06Z

That is so incredible. I barely remember using normal cassettes and am a little surprised people have put time and effort into advancing that particular strain of technology; apparently they've gotten results!

@Kyle

I have never had a good experience with mini disc and have never found a good purpose for them. What makes you want them back, if I might ask?

sevags
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Advanced Member

2014-05-08T19:21:11Z

Do you call these "cassettes"? From what I have always known these are backup storage tapes, not the standard cassette tapes you would put music on and play in your car or boom box hell these are so different they might as well be 8-Track tape. The entire internet is reporting this as a "185tb cassette tape" wow talk about a successful PR spin by Sony.

Regardless that it isn't a cassette and just a tape, that is a lot of damn storage for a backup tape or just backup period!!!

Dave_HH
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Advanced Member

2014-05-08T21:36:19Z

You hit the nail on the head, sevags -- which is why we poked fun at it. :)

digitaldd
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Advanced Member

2014-05-09T08:50:59Z

Yup from the Ultrium/LTO website.. Where i work we were using Ultrium 3 till last year and Ultrium 4 is available now. looks like we are already beyond their claims unless of course their numbers are sans compression.

JohnJenkinsHill
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2014-05-09T11:36:12Z

The LTO capacities you show in your image are compressed capacities, transfer rates are also based on compressed data. I am a Backup Manager working for an Enterprise level organisation & I never base my calculations on compressed data sizes. Many file containers are already heavily compressed. On average I'd say we see data compressed to 80% its original size. Tape is cheap but slow (relative to HDD arrays). Based upon current LTO6 drives speeds it would take just over 13 days of to fill a 185 TB tape ... that's presuming that the 185 TB's figure that Sony are quoting is uncompressed (doubtful). I'd hope that write speeds to its new media type greatly exceed those of LTO6.

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