IBM has announced that its engineers have successfully stored 1TB
on a single linear tape cartridge.
Through a combination of tape read/write stabilisation
technologies, IBM has managed to fit 1,536 recording tracks on a
one-half inch tape - four times that of available storage tapes,
according to John Teale, IBM's director of tape technology.
Application of the 1TB tape technology, which is still in the hands
of IBM Research, will appear in IBM's 3590 Tape product. High-end
mainframe-style computers are the core market for 3590 tape
products.
The required new tape drive that will run the 1TB tapes will offer
users backwards compatibility to their previous generations of 3590
tape, said Teale.
But customers face up to a five-year wait for the 1TB tape
technology to hit the market, as existing implementations require
15 hours to write the 1TB tape.
"We need to develop performance capability to match the capacity
capability that we can deliver to the market," said Teale.