In 1990s, cassette tapes (also called compact cassette, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette) were a very popular media to listen music and songs. But due to invention of CDs, DVDs etc, tapes are now extinct. And the very interesting thing is all on a sudden, Sony has made a cassette tape of 185 TB storage size.
The cassette tape was first invented and released by Phillips Company in the Netherlands in 1962. But the real era of cassette tapes started in 1971. This is when the tapes started being heavily used for musical purposes. But early 90’s, the cassette tape started to lose popularity when the CD came out. By 1993, CDs were already outselling cassette tapes. The decline was so bad, that by 2000, only four percent of music sold was sold by cassette tape and major music labels stopped having their music put on cassette tapes.
But still extremely high density tapes are used by corporations and government agencies for archival purposes because they’re cheaper, more power efficient, and more reliable than disk-based storage. And seems like Sony has taken the initiative to revive the moribund cassette tape industry.
Sony has developed a magnetic tape technology which is able to record approximately 74 times (which is 185TB) more data than conventional magnetic tape media. In other words, the magnetic tape technology has 3,700 times more storage than a Blu-ray disc. Sony’s magnetic tape technology packs the world’s highest areal recording density of 148 Gb/in2. With that kind of density, one small data cartridge can hold a monumental 185TB of data.
Sony has mentioned that it has used a vacuum-forming technique called sputter deposition to create a layer of magnetic crystals by shooting argon ions at a polymer film substrate. The crystals, measuring just 7.7 nanometers on average, pack together more densely than any other previous method. As a result, three Blu-Rays’ worth of data can fit on one square inch of Sony’s new wonder-tape.
However, Sony hasn’t commercialized the technology yet. And the company will discuss the technique of its magnetic tape technology at International Magnetics Conference in Dresden.
Source: Sony
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