Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape

[JSngry]

not music, data storage.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/why-the-future-of-data-storage-is-still-magnetic-tape

[Scott Dolan]

Digital music is data. 

[JSngry]

Of course it is, but that's not what the article is about.

[Scott Dolan]

Sure it is. 

It’s about tape outstripping optical hard drives. 

Data is data, whether it be text, photos, music, video, etc. 

[AllenLowe]

1) just to note, he is talking about digital tape.

2) and....my own experience with old DAT tapes is not good, in more than one case the music on them has just vanished (including, to my heartbreak, an outtake of me with Doc Cheatham recorded at a rehearsal at my house in 1990 or so). So, this makes me nervous, though I suppose the tech has improved.

[JSngry]

8 minutes ago, AllenLowe said:

1) just to note, he is talking about digital tape.

2) and....my own experience with old DAT tapes is not good, in more than one case the music on them has just vanished (including, to my heartbreak, an outtake of me with Doc Cheatham recorded at a rehearsal at my house in 1990 or so). So, this makes me nervous, though I suppose the tech has improved.

and the comments after the article share similar concerns.

• Format longevity is a problem. There are lots of old tapes around with no readers left, as NASA discovered with data from the Lunar Orbiters (https://www.nasa.gov/topics.... I hit this myself when I left DEC with personal files stored on a DECTape, and found no one could read it!
• You fail to mention that magnetic media deteriorates over time. Some of the cheap products are worthless/unreadable/blank after only 10 years sitting on a shelf.
• Does tape physically "rot" away after so many years? I remember that being a concern years ago, in data and audio recording.
• The only problem with tape is long term data storage. Archival optical disks (~100 years) and archival optical M-DISCs (~1000 years) beat tape by a mile in that regard.

[Scott Dolan]

It’s actually somewhat bizarre that people are still arguing that media that makes physical contact with the pickup mechanism is still more viable than media that doesn’t. 

Things that rub together eventually wear down and fail. This is common knowledge 101. 

[JSngry]

Yeah, anything that has moving parts will wear out eventually.

[Dave Garrett]

There's a lot unsaid in that article, but given the audience for IEEE Spectrum, there is presumably some assumption of familiarity with the technology among the readership. LTO has been a standard for almost 20 years, and it is widely used for backup data storage in enterprise IT and archival environments. Every two to three years, a new generation of LTO technology is released, and the specification mandates that the current generation be able to read tapes dating back two generations, and write to tapes dating back to the previous generation. The technology roadmap is well-defined, so users know what to expect going forward for the next 3-4 generations. 

Linear Tape-Open

LTO tape is NOT designed to sit on a shelf for 100 years in a static archive environment. Those who are using it typically have a clear migration strategy implemented, so that current tapes are rotated out of storage and migrated to newer-generation tapes every few years. This can obviously be a financial challenge for smaller archives operating on limited budgets. 

The bigger problem with almost all storage technologies is not necessarily long-term stability of the medium itself, but long-term availability of playback hardware. 2" quadruplex videotape was a broadcast standard for many years, with untold thousands of hours of television programming recorded on it, but at this point anything that has yet to be transferred to a more modern format is at risk of being lost, as there are fewer and fewer working quad machines out there, and the expertise required to operate and maintain them is likewise fading into history. IIRC the last company that was still manufacturing new quad video heads went out of business a year or two ago, so when the existing ones wear out, there aren't any more replacements. 

[mikeweil]

Noting human beings make is for eternity, data included. We only can keep the essence in our minds and pass that on. Not even texts careved in stone are safe. As far as tape and other storage media are concerned, I was aware the timeswould come.

When I think of the many great books that have vanished, or great musical moments that weren't even recorded. John Cage once said, people think, when they have the record, they have the music. But they only have the record. He was right. We always want to keep and collect things, but in the end .... my best friend had a large book and CD collection, but when he died, he had left no will, and most of it was dumped. Just one example ..... fires, warfare, earthquakes .... I'm in tears when I think about all the stuff that was destroyed. But that seems to be part of life.

So much for the philosophical aspects. Not to talk abot the economical: who will pay for all that storage? When I think about all the problems libraries, archives, and museums have ...