IBM breaks tape storage record getting 330 terabytes onto a single cartridge

Who said tape was (completely) dead?

IBM has smashed its own own tape data storage record by storing as much as 330TB on a single cartridge - smashing its own record of 220TB, set just over two years ago.

What this means is that this single cartridge can hold 330 million average sized books. Or, if you prefer, a square inch of tape can hold 201 gigabytes - that's something that couldn't be replicated by any SSD for any price. At least, not at the moment.

"Tape has traditionally been used for video archives, back-up files, replicas for disaster recovery and retention of information on premise, but the industry is also expanding to off-premise applications in the cloud," said IBM fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou.

"While 'sputtered tape' is expected to cost a little more to manufacture than current commercial tape, the potential for very high capacity will make the cost per terabyte very attractive, making this technology practical for cold storage in the cloud."

The problem with cold storage is that it really is cold. When we visited CERN a couple of years ago they told us their tape archive was now down to being accessible within half-an-hour of request. When you consider how the world has moved on, asking for a 30-minute wait is a big ask.

But for the reams of machine-to-machine (M2M) data that is created every second, this could be a viable solution. Most of the data created by computers for their own use is never looked at again and, if it was, it probably wouldn't mean much to anyone. So why have it clogging up more expensive £/GB storage options?

IBM and Sony have worked together on squeezing more out of the same tape it has used since the sixties when it held just 2MB an inch.

These days, it's all about better lubrication, and the magic word - sputtering - a technique which involves the way that bits of metal in a film are sprayed on the tape. It's not dissimilar to the techniques used to increase the size of disc platters in data centres, in combination with helium sealing.