Tape Drives As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
814 words · ~4 min read
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you might still have some Michael Jackson or lead Zeppelin albums on
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cassette tape lying around your house but chances are these days you're
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listening to mp3s of Billy Jean or Stairway to Heaven instead but even
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though Magnetic Tape has been long obsolete for music it's still going
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strong for data storage wait a sec Luke
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how is that even possible haven't modern ssds and hard drives displaced
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everything else I mean even Optical discs are becoming a thing of the past
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but believe it or not tape has some pretty significant advantages that have
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made its popular storage medium last for over 60 years in fact the first tape
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drive appeared all the way back in 1951 and had a name that made it sound
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like something out of a Jetson's episode The Unis Servo this was actually the
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tape drive that was used for the famous univac 1 the first ever commercial
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computer built in the US the univac took up an entire room and not surprisingly
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the Unis Servo was a behemoth as well
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holding nearly a/4 mile of tape on large
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reels but only about 225 kiloby of data later though tape
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storage became more practical due to switching from heavy metal tapes to
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plastic tape coated in magnetic substances that store the actual data
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more advanced recording methods such as using the entire width of the tape to
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increase data density helps bring capacities over the years to 10 terab
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today in a package that weighs only half a pound but then then why don't we see
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people using tape drives and personal rigs very often aside from the drives
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being very expensive they also tend to be very slow think about how long it
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took to rewind a tape from Blockbuster way back in the day when they were still
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a thing unlike hard drives or ssds which can go directly to the data you want in
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a small fraction of a second tape drives have to wind themselves back and forth
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sequentially to access files meaning they're just too sluggish to use in
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day-to-day computing but even though a tape storage solution requires a large
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upfront cost for a drive the tape cartridges themselves are pretty darn
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cheap compared to other forms of storage media and they tend to have great
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longevity making tape a great choice for archival storage and data backups not
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only is magnetic tape pretty Hardy but the fact that most organizations use it
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strictly for backup and aren't constantly accessing their tape drives
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mean that they're less prone to wearing out than something like a mechanical
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hard drive which is constantly spinning shortening their lifespan and tape's
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appeal for Mass backup storage doesn't appear to be going anywhere in fact Sony
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recently developed a new type of tape that can hold
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185 terabytes on a single cartridge so
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if you miss your cassette collection from the 1980s you can always digitize
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all 23 million of your songs and just stick them on one tape speaking of
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listening to things audible.com audible.com is the leading provider of
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of audiobooks with more than 180,000 downloadable titles across all types of
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literature including fiction non-fiction and periodicals audiobooks are great to
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listen to you while you're doing stuff that whatever you're listening to isn't
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super important whether that's driving somewhere sitting on the subway doing
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chores around the house going to the gym maybe you're playing a video game and
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you don't need to hear the music for the 487th time not a bad idea for our
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audience members audible is offering a free 30-day trial just go to
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audible.com I and browse for over the like I said 180,000 audio programs
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download a title for free and start listening it's that easy to try their
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service I've been listening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone from JK
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rolling you might be wondering why is that came out a while ago but there's
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that new spin-off movie coming out and much like Star Wars I want to catch up
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so go to audible.com tequi and start your 30-day free trial today all right
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guys thank you for watching if you liked it like it if you disliked it sorry
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about that I guess uh also check out Channel Super Fun my video on the screen
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melter prank is almost at 2 million views and I have no idea why so maybe go
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watch it and tell me also in the comment section down below let us know if
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go don't forget to subscribe and follow