Tape is back in Vogue as Terabyte Tape and SuperDAT come to Life

The tape format seems to be making a comeback as big brands like HP, Sony, Sun and IBM try to breathe some life back into the quasi-obsolete technology.

HP in collaboration with Sony has decided to work on DAT that can work for the seventh generation of Digital Data Storage.

The tape will have twice the capacity and transfer rate than the previous version, up to 320 GB can be stored on one tape and is expected to be launched in the first half of 2009.

Meanwhile Sun and IBM have each introduced their own 1 TB tape drive; IBM’s tape drive is named System Storage TS1130, it works at the astounding speed of 160MB/sec. speed.

Sun, on the other hand has released StorageTek T10000B, which is backward compatible, and older cartridges used on older StorageTek T10000 can also be used on the newer version.

Tape is still considered as a good means to back up and archive data - where speed is not paramount and reliability (and costs) are critical, which are reasons why companies like HP, Sony, Sun and IBM are still investing in the medium.