Talk:Tape drive
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Not trolling, but where I live, tape drives are considered obsolete. Everyone here believes that hard disk drives replaced tape drives in the 90s. Recently I foud an article on Slashdot, about some new achievements in the field of tape storage, and then I went on Wikipedia to read about tape drives.
So someone, please let me know: what is the current status of tape drives? Whos is still using them? Are tape drives mainstream again?
Thank you.
- I'd say that the biggest place tape drives are used is for backup. BioTube 23:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Tape drives have always been main stream, its just people who use PC's don't bother to back things up. The whole point of a tape drive is that it give you a removable and robust storage. Hard disk does not. It might be removable but it is definatly not robust. If you have 1 Tb of data that needs backing up, how are you going to do this on to a hard disk?
Nick.
[edit] Merger
Hi. It seems that Shoe-shining Effect is nothing but the definition of a term that relates only to tape drives. I propose the information on that page be merged into this article. - Jorbettis 07:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
- I agree! -- Austin Murphy 03:37, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Advancements TODO
Which vendor and when introduced:
- Streaming mode instead of start-stop. Elimination of vacuum columns. Elimination of long empty Inter-Record Gaps 1979 IBM 8809
- Tape directory: IBM patented '93 as DBM, exact model tbd [1]. Archive QIC [2]? Travan TR-1?
- fast data access of tape directory: Quantum [3]?
- double coated media: Quantum?
- symmetric phase recording: Quantum?
- Head assembly servo following tape optical pre-recorded servo tracks [4] (SDLT?)
- "Cleaning needed" indicator: 3590 [5]?
- Automatic head cleaning on each load (LTO?)
- Tape cartridge barcodes: IBM 3590 [6]?
- Speed matching (to decrease shoe-shining) (LTO2?)
- WORM tape (T9940? AIT-2 in 1999?)
- Memory chip in the cartridge that keeps relevant information about the tape (AIT-1?)
- With remote access (AIT-2 in 1999?)
- Amplifier in the rotating drum, close to the head to reduce noise (active drum) (AIT-2 in 1999?)
- Tape media (possibly a separate article at some point, several variations of each type exist):
- Vicalloy - UNISERVO
- (Iron) Oxide
- CrO2 Cromium Dioxide
- MP Metal Partical
- AME Advance Metal Evaporated (Exabyte Mammoth? AIT-1 in 1996?)
- AMP Advanced Metal Powder [7]
- ...
- (native) Capacity milestones
- 100 MB -
- 1 GB -
- 10 GB -
- 100 GB -
- 1 TB - not yet
--Kubanczyk 22:41, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
