It shouldn’t come as a surprise that data plays a crucial role in everything that we do. But have you ever stopped to think about where and how we store data? Beyond your notebooks, computers, and cloud-based storage systems, you probably don’t consider the impact and importance of different data storage options. A study on big data conducted by the International Data Corporation (IDC) revealed that the amount of data being recorded increases 30 to 40 percent per year, while the capacity of modern hard drives is increasing at less than half the rate of the data being recorded. To address this issue, people are turning to the trusted tape. Magnetic tape data storage is a system used to store digital information through recording. Today, most magnetic tape is packaged in cartridges and cassettes. The Benefit of Magnetic Tape Data Storage Since a lot of the data recorded today doesn’t need to be accessed immediately, magnetic tape is a strong solution for long-term data storage. While it may seem outdated, there are a lot of companies and organizations still using tape for data storage, and the technology has advanced tremendously since its introduction in the 1950s. The first commercial digital-tape storage system stored roughly 1.1 megabytes on one reel of tape. Today, a cartridge holds 15 terabytes (that’s 15 million megabytes!). Although the tape data isn’t as easily accessible as data on hard drives, the storage is more energy efficient and reliable. Data is also extremely secure--when the tape isn’t mounted in a drive, the data isn’t accessible. In an age where data theft through cyberattacks is a concern, this option for storage is highly attractive. It’s also more cost-effective, as it only costs one-sixth the amount you’d have to pay to store the same amount of data on a disk. The capacity for storage on magnetic tape increases about 33 percent each year, meaning that it is able to support the growth of data collection.   Since tape and hard drives were first introduced, manufacturers have worked to reduce costs and increase efficiency. They accomplished this by increasing the density of information that can be recorded on the magnetic material. Due to a greater market size and revenue from the sales of hard drives, however, manufacturers had to scale up more aggressively. In doing so, the density of high-capacity hard drives grew to about 100 times that of the latest magnetic tape. How Magnetic Tape Works Hard drives and tape use the same basic mechanisms to store digital data. Data is encoded as a series of bits in narrow tracks on a thin film of magnetic material. The data is represented by the presence or absence of a magnetic-polarity transition at specific points along the track. Although they use the same basic mechanisms for storage, hard drives and tape vastly differ when it comes to performance. To access data stored on tape, it takes about 50 to 60 seconds, while it only takes 5 to 10 milliseconds to access hard drive data. Writing data, however, is over two times faster on magnetic tape than on disk. As data storage systems advance and evolve, tape will continue to be a cost-effective option. To keep up on the latest magnetic news, check out the rest of our blog.