The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has transformed numerous sectors, including that of storage hard drives, causing a significant increase in the prices of SSDs and HDDs due to the growing demand for space to house AI models. In the last six months, prices for these devices have increased by more than 10%, reflecting market pressure.
Although SSDs and HDDs are the most common and practical options today, magnetic tapes remain a relevant alternative, especially due to their massive storage capacity. Magnetic tapes, a storage medium that many might consider obsolete, differ significantly from solid or mechanical hard drives. These tapes are notoriously slower and more fragile compared to their modern counterparts, but they have considerable storage capacity that still keeps them in use.
In search of speed, users tend to opt for SSDs, while HDDs are preferred for their higher capacity. This has led to magnetic tapes being frequently overlooked. However, these have not been completely relegated to oblivion; On the contrary, they are still used in certain specific contexts.
According to data from PC Gamer, almost 153 exabytes of information were sent using magnetic tapes in 2023, representing a 3% increase compared to 2022. This increase is largely due to the trust that companies such as HP, IBM and Quantum deposited in the Ultrium LTO (Linear Tape-Open) format. This magnetic tape cartridge format, despite its fragile nature, its slowness and its linear structure that prevents random reading of the content, can store up to 18 TB of data and read it at a speed of 400 Mb/s.
These figures may not seem impressive compared to the capabilities of SSDs and HDDs, but magnetic tapes find their niche in specific applications, such as system backups and data files. In these environments, maximum speed is not a critical factor, allowing magnetic tapes to excel due to their low cost per gigabyte.
This economic advantage facilitates its large-scale and long-term implementation, effectively competing with other storage methods in terms of cost and data retention capacity. Thus, magnetic tapes continue to prove their worth in the world of data storage, adapting and staying relevant in an era dominated by more modern technologies.
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