Thought tapes were a thing of the past? Think again! Sony has unveiled their latest project, a tape that holds a whopping 148 GB for every square inch… that is a potential of 185 TB of information stored.
That’s a long B side!
Sony’s strategy will be further disclosed in Dresden at the International Magnetics Conference in Dresden. So far we see that it utilizes a vacuum-shaping method to make a layer of attractive magnetic crystal which stick together more thickly than any viable past strategy.
I still think my olive green Sony Walkman could take it down… it certainly did when it came to Pink Floyd.
In the end we get a tape where in one square inch you get equivalent of three Blu-Ray discs. Before you start thinking you can just throw this into your old cassette player, this isn’t the tape you’re looking for considering it will be a very slow read/write medium. The customers of this technology will use devices designed to back up mountains of information (read “One massive corporation”) where speed is trumped by efficient back up retrieval.
No more information is out about a release date, but we will keep an eye out to see where this retro inspired tech goes.