Innovation Elsewhere – 3,700 Blu-Rays in a Single Cassette Tape

Sony has developed a new technology that can store 185 terabytes on good, old-fashioned magnetic tape.

For example, three Blu-Rays’ worth of data can fit on one square inch of Sony’s new super-tape. One of these new tapes will store the equivalent of 3,700 Blu-Rays’ worth of memory.

In fact, one relatively cheap tape would hold five more terabytes than a $9,305 hard drive storage array.

In order to create the new tape, Sony employed the use of sputter deposition, which creates layers of magnetic crystals by firing argon ions at a polymer film substrate.

Combined with a soft magnetic under-layer, the magnetic particles measured in at just 7.7 nanometers on average, able to be closely packed together.

Sony developed the technology for long-term, industrial-sized data backup – storage tape shipments grew 13% two years ago, and were headed for a 26% growth just last year.