Magnetic tape makes a comeback

It's hard to believe that magnetic tape is having a renaissance, but researchers at IBM have developed a new tape material to give it a second life.

At IBM's Zurich Research Laboratories in Switzerland, researchers have figured out how to store 29.5 billion bits per square inch, which translates to a cartridge capable of holding around 35 terabytes of data. That's more than 40 times the capacity of cartridges currently available, and several times more than a hard disk of comparable size.

We're not suggesting that you rush to the store to recreate the past but this new magnetic medium could be an alternative especially if the price is right. And so far, it seems to be. IBM researchers say that solid state drives cost between $3 and $20 per gigabyte. Tape, however, costs less than a cent per gigabyte.

Of course, there's a bigger issue of just how long any of this storage technology can last. So far, it seems that paper outlasts them all. But, geez, who still uses paper?

For more on magnetic tapes:
- see this MIT Technology Review article [1]