Removable storage media.
Continuing on our topic of storage media, I'd first like to start by discussing removable storage media
as they play a role just as important as that of fixed storage media in today's world.
Magnetic Tape drives.
Introduced by IBM in the 1950s, magnetic tape was an easy and very fast way to store data at a speed
equal to its processing time.
The IBM 726 magnetic tape reader and recorder was one of the first devices to offer this storage with
a capacity or tape density of 100 bits per linear inch of tape.
Inch of tape should give an indicator of the size of the tape, which was wound on a large wheel similar
to an old film roll movie tape.
With magnetic tape, media data is written across the width of the magnetic coated plastic strip in
frames separated by gaps consisting of blocks.
Magnetic tape is still very much used today, and like many other storage media types, has significantly
decreased in size while increasing in capacity and speed.
To give an idea of how far magnetic tape storage has come in 2017, IBM developed newer tape storage
media with a tape density of 200 guests per inch on a single cartridge, which can hold up to 333GB
of data.
These cartridges for older folks like myself are the size of a cassette tape, or for the younger ones,
not much smaller than the average smartphone, which fits in your hand.
As of 2019, Fujifilm released the Fujifilm linear tape open Ultrium eight LTO eight magnetic tape cartridge
with a native capacity of 12 TB terabytes and a data rate of 360 maps.
30 TB of compressed data can fit on this single 12 TB cartridge.