IBM Set To Develop 100TB Tape Drive

KingFishKingFish
edited December 2004 in Science & Tech
IBM has begun work on new technologies designed to boost the capacity of tape storage devices by 250 times. Using "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the company's microprocessor division, researchers say they expect to one day build cartridges that can store as much as 100TB of data.
For years now, engineers have wrung more capacity out of tape storage by narrowing the tracks of magnetic material that store data on a spool of tape. With its current technology, IBM is now able to store 704 data tracks on the 1.27 centimetre (half-inch) wide tape used by IBM's TotalStorage 3580 LTO Generation 3 drives. This device can store about 400GB of data, but in order to store more than the 1T byte of data that IBM is planning for its next-generation products, researchers say they will have to make some major changes to the way they manufacture tape.

That's where the microprocessor techniques come in. The Almaden researchers are now exploring ways they can use chip techniques such as reactive ion etching (a very precise method for putting patterns on film) or sputter deposition (a method of applying film in a very well-controlled way) to increase the storage capacity of tape.

The ultimate goal is to shrink the size of those tape tracks so that more data can be squeezed onto the same area of tape. "The track size now is in the neighborhood of about 10 microns," said Spike Narayan, a senior manager with IBM Research. His group of ten researchers hopes to shrink that size down to about 0.5 micron, or 500 nanometers, within the next five years. "This will carry us all the way to the 100T byte regime," he said.
Source: TechWorld

Comments

  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited December 2004
    I don't know, but aren't there better faster ways of storing 100TB of data, and aren't tape drives kinda outdated?
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited December 2004
    Companies still use them on a daily basis. I know my mom backs up their entire system every other day before she leaves, and carries a copy of the tape with her.
  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited December 2004
    How much time does it typically take to back up 1GB (as a baseline measurment)
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited December 2004
    A few hours. I cant recall off the top of my head how long exactly though.

    Seriously though, this is 50+ year old technology. WHY can't they figure out how to get away from tapes alltogether, rather than just making bigger tapes?
  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited December 2004
    Because people don't like change?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    100TB on a single cartridge is very nice, but I'm only interested if it can be read/written to at faster than 2MB/sec. Try 2GB/sec and we're talking money here.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • madmatmadmat
    edited December 2004
    I for one want one, then I can snake my way onto a T-1 connection and use it to backup the entire internet...or something like that.
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