5 ms·

Cassette tapes are the future of big data storage

50 points by vinkelhake 14y ago

arb99 14y ago
"Current projections by the trade body Information Storage Industry Consortium show that although hard drives will be able to store 3 terabytes a piece in a decade's time, that still amounts to at least 120,000 drives a year." huh?
- aristidb 14y ago
  I think that's for each individual platter, of which a modern 3 TB hard drive has typically 3 or 4.
  - arb99 14y ago
    think its a typo tbh
- hollerith 14y ago
  "3 terabytes" should be "3 petabytes". ADDED. Withdrawn: see child comment.
  - schiffern 14y ago
    That would be 120 drives/year, not 120,000.
    - hollerith 14y ago
      Good point. I withdraw grandparent.
mistercow 14y ago
This is sort of like saying that RAM will be replaced by HDDs because HDDs are so much bigger. It's comparing apples to oranges. It's fascinating that tape drives are making a comeback, but to suggest that they can replace HDDs is just a fantasy This quote: The downside of tapes is that they are slower to access than hard discs because they have to be fetched by a robotic mechanism, inserted in a reader and spooled to the right point. But the Linear Tape File System, which is being developed, expedites this process to make it comparable to disc drives, Eleftheriou says. indicates that the reporter did not understand what he was being told. LTFS offers an abstraction layer so that software can treat a tape drive like a hard drive. That makes programming easier, but it will not have any effect on performance. A file system cannot, after all, magically bestow random access unto a sequential access medium. So if tape is to make a comeback in storing data for, say, the web (as implied by the article's opening paragraph, then it's still going to have a HDD based system in front of it as a cache. It would be an interesting future where viewing a post that hadn't been accessed in a few years took several minutes as you waited for that old data to be recached from tape.
- brudgers 14y ago
  If tape is cheap enough, multiple tapes could store the same data in a different sequences, e.g. beginning at 0%, 25%, 50%, and 75% of the run length. Initial access could then be quicker, and predictive caching used for the remaining data on the tape.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    In other words, a tape drive RAID. But since you can use related techniques to improve performance with hard drives, I don't think that will make up much ground for tape drives.
    - bduerst 14y ago
      Yes, but the point was to get read time with tapes up to that of HDDs.
      - mistercow 14y ago
        Which a RAID style system probably won't achieve. HDDs start ahead of tape drives in performance. So it's reasonable to assume that HDD + RAID is also going to perform better than tape drive + RAID.
        bduerst 14y ago
        They weren't comparing RAID tapes against RAID HDDs, just RAID Tapes against normal HDD
        jdbernard 14y ago
        No, the discussion was whether they would replace HDDs. From the initial comment: > It's fascinating that tape drives are making a comeback, but to suggest that they can replace HDDs is just a fantasy Tape + RAID vs. HDD with no optimizations is a useless comparison. Why would anyone even care about that?
Evbn 14y ago
Hard drives use more power because they are usually turned on for use, while tape drives use less because they are usually turned off and not used? Thanks for the insight, New Scientist. The most interesting item in that story was the claim (probably incorrect, based on the article's overall sloppiness) that LTFS will be "comparable" in speed to hard drive access.
stephengillie 14y ago
Researchers at Fuji Film in Japan and IBM in Zurich, Switzerland, have already built prototypes that can store 35 terabytes of data - or about 35 million books' worth of information - on a cartridge that measures just 10cm x 10cm x 2cm. This is achieved using magnetic tape coated in particles of barium ferrite. Where does the gain in storage density come from, New Scientist? This article is so breathless to capture the linkbait of using old technology that just about any useful info has been left out. The prototype, at about 4" x 4" x 0.75", is just larger than a desktop HDD, and can hold about 8.5 times as much data as a 4TB 3.5" HDD. Does barium ferrite allow for tighter magnetic fields, which would allow for a higher data density? If so, is that material being used in spinning disk HDDs? And how does this extremely physically complex system stack up against SSDs, as they lower in cost?
- johngalt 14y ago
  Tape has always been denser geometrically than HDDs. More surface area on a reel vs a platter. SSDs would be the opposite of tape. Big$/GB low latency vs. Low$/GB high latency. Obviously SSDs would replace almost all other media if it could beat tape on $/GB.
  - stephengillie 14y ago
    When you consider the $/GB, do you consider the cost of operating these as mechanical devices - mechanical wear and fatigue, increased electricity usage, administrative costs (tape storage, space for robot to work, robot repairs, etc), and possibility of damage (dropped tapes)?
    - johngalt 14y ago
      Yes of course those are considered and the results may surprise you. One of the beautiful things about tapes is that you can store them unpowered. All you power is the robot(s) and the drive(s). 100 tapes sitting idle in a silo will last much longer than 100 hard drives spinning at 7200rpm. SSD's failure rates are even higher than HDDs.
- ibmzrl 14y ago
zupreme 14y ago
I shudder to think of all the guys who will use this article as ammunition the next time their wives ask them to toss out the old cassette collection once and for all. Seriously, though, I think that this is great news. If this really gains any traction this could represent a resurgence for some Japanese companies which hold patents on cassette tape technology. After the recent Fukushima debacle, they could certainly use it.
jlarocco 14y ago
Off on a tangent, but does anybody know why they store the data from the radio telescope array for such a long time? Wouldn't it be more efficient to analyze it, save the interesting data, and get rid of the rest?
- schiffern 14y ago
  Lots of discoveries in astronomy are now made by re-analyzing data from previous observations. The data storage costs are a pittance compared to the cost of telescope time. By saving the data you're getting the most out of each observation.
- bithive123 14y ago
  I think you answered your own question. In many cases finding out which data is interesting _is_ the analysis.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  am not sure re-analysis is that important myself, but it looks like the SKA will be used in a pretty traditional way, with groups of astronomers applying to do particular observations. that means that the processing of data will likely be different for each group, and will probably take place over time (some poor grad student will likely spend most of their thesis - several years - on it). the other approach - taken with something like the SDSS - is to make a telescope for just one task (typically a survey). then you can process the data and throw it away. i am pretty sure that is what SDSS did, and what, say, the LSST will probably do too (if it ever gets finished). the advantage of the first approach is that you are much more flexible, which means more likelihood of making a big discovery (particularly when, as with this telescope, collecting area is larger than ever before, which means that you can see fainter and further back in time, making it ideal to study isolated, unusual objects - in contrast, survey telescopes make different technical compromises so that they cover a wider field of view), and also more chances to make and exploit upgrades over time. the downside is dealing with issues like this (another issue is data transport - traditionally you go to a telescope and then take the data home with you; i imagine we're now getting to the point where instead you will process data local to the data storage). disclaimer: i was an optical astronomer, not radio, and that was years ago, so this may already be old news / incorrect in details. but the general idea should be ok. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array http://www.sdss.org/ http://www.sdss.org/ http://www.lsst.org/lsst/ http://www.lsst.org/lsst/ ps often telescopes do make data public after a certain time. but the idea is not so much to allow reanalysis as to make sure the people who originally took the data reduce and publish it. it's easy to postpone that kind of work, but the idea that someone else might do it and publish first is quite a motivator.
bitwize 14y ago
True, but cassette tapes are also the past and present of big data storage. If you have gobs of data you need to stash somewhere, tape is still massively more cost-effective than disk, and this is no secret.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

50 points by vinkelhake 14y ago

arb99 14y ago

"Current projections by the trade body Information Storage Industry Consortium show that although hard drives will be able to store 3 terabytes a piece in a decade's time, that still amounts to at least 120,000 drives a year." huh?

aristidb 14y ago
I think that's for each individual platter, of which a modern 3 TB hard drive has typically 3 or 4.
- arb99 14y ago
  think its a typo tbh
hollerith 14y ago
"3 terabytes" should be "3 petabytes". ADDED. Withdrawn: see child comment.
- schiffern 14y ago
  That would be 120 drives/year, not 120,000.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    Good point. I withdraw grandparent.

mistercow 14y ago

This is sort of like saying that RAM will be replaced by HDDs because HDDs are so much bigger. It's comparing apples to oranges. It's fascinating that tape drives are making a comeback, but to suggest that they can replace HDDs is just a fantasy This quote: The downside of tapes is that they are slower to access than hard discs because they have to be fetched by a robotic mechanism, inserted in a reader and spooled to the right point. But the Linear Tape File System, which is being developed, expedites this process to make it comparable to disc drives, Eleftheriou says. indicates that the reporter did not understand what he was being told. LTFS offers an abstraction layer so that software can treat a tape drive like a hard drive. That makes programming easier, but it will not have any effect on performance. A file system cannot, after all, magically bestow random access unto a sequential access medium. So if tape is to make a comeback in storing data for, say, the web (as implied by the article's opening paragraph, then it's still going to have a HDD based system in front of it as a cache. It would be an interesting future where viewing a post that hadn't been accessed in a few years took several minutes as you waited for that old data to be recached from tape.

brudgers 14y ago
If tape is cheap enough, multiple tapes could store the same data in a different sequences, e.g. beginning at 0%, 25%, 50%, and 75% of the run length. Initial access could then be quicker, and predictive caching used for the remaining data on the tape.
- mistercow 14y ago
  In other words, a tape drive RAID. But since you can use related techniques to improve performance with hard drives, I don't think that will make up much ground for tape drives.
  - bduerst 14y ago
    Yes, but the point was to get read time with tapes up to that of HDDs.
    - mistercow 14y ago
      Which a RAID style system probably won't achieve. HDDs start ahead of tape drives in performance. So it's reasonable to assume that HDD + RAID is also going to perform better than tape drive + RAID.
      - bduerst 14y ago
        They weren't comparing RAID tapes against RAID HDDs, just RAID Tapes against normal HDD
        jdbernard 14y ago
        No, the discussion was whether they would replace HDDs. From the initial comment: > It's fascinating that tape drives are making a comeback, but to suggest that they can replace HDDs is just a fantasy Tape + RAID vs. HDD with no optimizations is a useless comparison. Why would anyone even care about that?

Evbn 14y ago

Hard drives use more power because they are usually turned on for use, while tape drives use less because they are usually turned off and not used? Thanks for the insight, New Scientist. The most interesting item in that story was the claim (probably incorrect, based on the article's overall sloppiness) that LTFS will be "comparable" in speed to hard drive access.

stephengillie 14y ago

Researchers at Fuji Film in Japan and IBM in Zurich, Switzerland, have already built prototypes that can store 35 terabytes of data - or about 35 million books' worth of information - on a cartridge that measures just 10cm x 10cm x 2cm. This is achieved using magnetic tape coated in particles of barium ferrite. Where does the gain in storage density come from, New Scientist? This article is so breathless to capture the linkbait of using old technology that just about any useful info has been left out. The prototype, at about 4" x 4" x 0.75", is just larger than a desktop HDD, and can hold about 8.5 times as much data as a 4TB 3.5" HDD. Does barium ferrite allow for tighter magnetic fields, which would allow for a higher data density? If so, is that material being used in spinning disk HDDs? And how does this extremely physically complex system stack up against SSDs, as they lower in cost?

johngalt 14y ago
Tape has always been denser geometrically than HDDs. More surface area on a reel vs a platter. SSDs would be the opposite of tape. Big$/GB low latency vs. Low$/GB high latency. Obviously SSDs would replace almost all other media if it could beat tape on $/GB.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  When you consider the $/GB, do you consider the cost of operating these as mechanical devices - mechanical wear and fatigue, increased electricity usage, administrative costs (tape storage, space for robot to work, robot repairs, etc), and possibility of damage (dropped tapes)?
  - johngalt 14y ago
    Yes of course those are considered and the results may surprise you. One of the beautiful things about tapes is that you can store them unpowered. All you power is the robot(s) and the drive(s). 100 tapes sitting idle in a silo will last much longer than 100 hard drives spinning at 7200rpm. SSD's failure rates are even higher than HDDs.
ibmzrl 14y ago

zupreme 14y ago

I shudder to think of all the guys who will use this article as ammunition the next time their wives ask them to toss out the old cassette collection once and for all. Seriously, though, I think that this is great news. If this really gains any traction this could represent a resurgence for some Japanese companies which hold patents on cassette tape technology. After the recent Fukushima debacle, they could certainly use it.

jlarocco 14y ago

Off on a tangent, but does anybody know why they store the data from the radio telescope array for such a long time? Wouldn't it be more efficient to analyze it, save the interesting data, and get rid of the rest?

schiffern 14y ago
Lots of discoveries in astronomy are now made by re-analyzing data from previous observations. The data storage costs are a pittance compared to the cost of telescope time. By saving the data you're getting the most out of each observation.
bithive123 14y ago
I think you answered your own question. In many cases finding out which data is interesting _is_ the analysis.
andrewcooke 14y ago
am not sure re-analysis is that important myself, but it looks like the SKA will be used in a pretty traditional way, with groups of astronomers applying to do particular observations. that means that the processing of data will likely be different for each group, and will probably take place over time (some poor grad student will likely spend most of their thesis - several years - on it). the other approach - taken with something like the SDSS - is to make a telescope for just one task (typically a survey). then you can process the data and throw it away. i am pretty sure that is what SDSS did, and what, say, the LSST will probably do too (if it ever gets finished). the advantage of the first approach is that you are much more flexible, which means more likelihood of making a big discovery (particularly when, as with this telescope, collecting area is larger than ever before, which means that you can see fainter and further back in time, making it ideal to study isolated, unusual objects - in contrast, survey telescopes make different technical compromises so that they cover a wider field of view), and also more chances to make and exploit upgrades over time. the downside is dealing with issues like this (another issue is data transport - traditionally you go to a telescope and then take the data home with you; i imagine we're now getting to the point where instead you will process data local to the data storage). disclaimer: i was an optical astronomer, not radio, and that was years ago, so this may already be old news / incorrect in details. but the general idea should be ok. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array http://www.sdss.org/ http://www.sdss.org/ http://www.lsst.org/lsst/ http://www.lsst.org/lsst/ ps often telescopes do make data public after a certain time. but the idea is not so much to allow reanalysis as to make sure the people who originally took the data reduce and publish it. it's easy to postpone that kind of work, but the idea that someone else might do it and publish first is quite a motivator.

bitwize 14y ago

True, but cassette tapes are also the past and present of big data storage. If you have gobs of data you need to stash somewhere, tape is still massively more cost-effective than disk, and this is no secret.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]