The storage density of magnetic tape, by contrast, has been increasing steadily, by 34% a year for nearly three decades. As a consequence, tape may catch up with hard disks within five years.

The new storage allows a single tape cartridge to store 580 terabytes of data. IBM puts the capacity in perspective, noting that 580 terabytes is equivalent to 786,977 CDs stacked 944 meters high.

See magnetic tape formats. Tracks on Magnetic Tape Except for helical scan, most tracks on tape run parallel to the length of the tape. See helical scan and serpentine recording.

Unit shipments of magnetic tape declined by over 20% from 2021 to 2022 as shown in the figure below (total 2022 shipments looked to be about 7,000 tape media units). This decline in unit shipments ...

LTO tape capacity shipments were down about 7.7% in 2020 versus 2020, but growth is expected in 2021 and going forward. Total magnetic tape capacity shipments in 2020 (LTO and IBM tape) are ...

Although magnetic tape hasn’t been popular at the consumer level since about the 1980s, in the realm of data centers and longer term archival storage, its slower speeds are an acceptable price ...