It is believed that magnetic tape is outdated as a digital data storage medium. However, the people and organizations that use it obviously haven’t read that. Linear Tape-Open tape manufacturers shipped 152.9 exabytes of magnetic tape for storage in 2023. This is 3.14% more than in 2022.
HPE, IBM, and Quantum provided details in annual report on LTO shipments. Part of the growth in 2023 is due to «rapid data creation and increased requirements for enterprise infrastructure scaling». There is little doubt that the boom in artificial intelligence is responsible for the growth in data and magnetic tape sales.
Over the past 30 years, the latest technologies have not been able to completely replace magnetic tape. There are several reasons for this. Tape has a huge capacity and can be easily switched to offline mode. Contrary to common household experience, it can be very durable and remain usable for decades.
For archiving and backup purposes, tape can often be cheaper than any disk. Tape storage can operate in «cold» mode, and therefore is protected from malware. Studies have also shown that magnetic tape drives are less polluting than hard disks and SSDs.
The main disadvantage is that tape is best used only for data that does not need to be accessed very often. Access to storage is hardly fast, and frequent requests accelerate wear and tear.
And yet, the volume of magnetic tape usage is relatively small. In the third quarter of 2024 alone, Seagate shipped 99 exabyte hard drives, and it’s just one of many manufacturers.
Source: Tom`s Hardware
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