If you began your IT career in the 1980s or before you probably have fond memories of spooling up half-inch, nine-track magnetic tapes. You'd be forgiven for thinking that in the age of affordable large capacity hard disks and SSDs tape storage was now firmly confined to the past, but not so. IBM scientists working with FUJIFILM of Japan, have demonstrated a recording density of 123 billion bits per square inch on tape, the equivalent of a palm-sized 220 TB tape cartridge. To make that a bit more meaningful 220 TB is equivalent to 1.37 billion text messages or the… [Continue Reading]