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Optical Tape Storage



 
 
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  #1  
Old July 27th 07, 09:38 PM posted to comp.arch.storage
Max Niederhofer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default Optical Tape Storage

Dear comp.arch.storage'rs,

I have searched the group for information but have failed to come up
with much. I wanted to ask what the current thinking was on optical
tape storage. Who are the people developing it? Is there a possibility
that it will replace magnetic tapes? Who do you see as early adopters?
What are some of the barriers to widespread usage? What are the
relevant substitutes?

I would be much obliged for any and all information, links to web
content or people who would be happy emailing about this subject.

Thanks for your time and info,

Max

  #2  
Old July 28th 07, 05:47 AM posted to comp.arch.storage
Faeandar
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 191
Default Optical Tape Storage

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:38:02 -0700, Max Niederhofer
wrote:

Dear comp.arch.storage'rs,

I have searched the group for information but have failed to come up
with much. I wanted to ask what the current thinking was on optical
tape storage. Who are the people developing it? Is there a possibility
that it will replace magnetic tapes? Who do you see as early adopters?
What are some of the barriers to widespread usage? What are the
relevant substitutes?

I would be much obliged for any and all information, links to web
content or people who would be happy emailing about this subject.

Thanks for your time and info,

Max


I can't say I've even heard about optical tape. Can *you* provide any
info on this topic? Where did you even hear about it?

~F
  #3  
Old July 28th 07, 07:04 AM posted to comp.arch.storage
Rob Turk[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13
Default Optical Tape Storage

"Max Niederhofer" wrote in message
ups.com...
Dear comp.arch.storage'rs,

I have searched the group for information but have failed to come up
with much. I wanted to ask what the current thinking was on optical
tape storage. Who are the people developing it? Is there a possibility
that it will replace magnetic tapes? Who do you see as early adopters?
What are some of the barriers to widespread usage? What are the
relevant substitutes?

I would be much obliged for any and all information, links to web
content or people who would be happy emailing about this subject.

Thanks for your time and info,

Max


I vaguely recall an article about Philips in The Netherlands developing
optical tape. They had lab prototypes but not any commercial products. Must
have been at least 5 years ago.

Rob


  #4  
Old July 30th 07, 11:59 AM posted to comp.arch.storage
Kevin Ashley
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default Optical Tape Storage

Max Niederhofer wrote:
Dear comp.arch.storage'rs,

I have searched the group for information but have failed to come up
with much. I wanted to ask what the current thinking was on optical
tape storage. Who are the people developing it? Is there a possibility
that it will replace magnetic tapes? Who do you see as early adopters?
What are some of the barriers to widespread usage? What are the
relevant substitutes?


I'm not up to date with the current position regarding optical tape, but
it's a technology (or rather, a number of technologies) that's been
around for some considerable time and failed to deliver usable products.

ICI developed a write-once optical tape media some time in the 1980s
which was hailed in the marketing for it as 'digital paper' - the idea
being that it was cheaper to store information on it than on paper,
and that it was just as durable (both things being atypical of digital
storage media at the time.) They needed a partner to develop drives,
and when I was looking closely at it in the mid-1990s, that partner
was Creo. I believe it was only ever installed at 12 sites, and what
I saw of the manufacturing process for the media meant it was never
going to scale up. 1 Tbyte on a single tape reel seemed amazing
in 1991 but but the pace of development of magnetic tape rapidly
made it seem less and less interesting. The drive business was
bought by EMASS from Creo, then changed hands again too many times
for me to keep track of it.

There were other efforts in the USA with which I'm less familiar,
although I know Kodak and Polaroid were both involved on the media
side, and a number of storage vendors were talking about future
tape cartridge products in the late 1990s/early 2000s, including
Storagetek. That project also folded, but it seems some of the
key players went off and founded/joined (I'm unclear which) a
company called Micro Continuum, which generated a fair amount
of press interest in 2001. They're still around, it seems.

This 10-year-old post answers similar questions to yours,
and I suspect many of the answers are still valid:

http://groups.google.com.au/group/co...b7b22c8607d3dc
  #5  
Old July 31st 07, 11:58 PM posted to comp.arch.storage
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 37
Default Optical Tape Storage

On Jul 30, 5:59 am, Kevin Ashley wrote:
Max Niederhofer wrote:
Dear comp.arch.storage'rs,


I have searched the group for information but have failed to come up
with much. I wanted to ask what the current thinking was on optical
tape storage. Who are the people developing it? Is there a possibility
that it will replace magnetic tapes? Who do you see as early adopters?
What are some of the barriers to widespread usage? What are the
relevant substitutes?


I'm not up to date with the current position regarding optical tape, but
it's a technology (or rather, a number of technologies) that's been
around for some considerable time and failed to deliver usable products.

ICI developed a write-once optical tape media some time in the 1980s
which was hailed in the marketing for it as 'digital paper' - the idea
being that it was cheaper to store information on it than on paper,
and that it was just as durable (both things being atypical of digital
storage media at the time.) They needed a partner to develop drives,
and when I was looking closely at it in the mid-1990s, that partner
was Creo. I believe it was only ever installed at 12 sites, and what
I saw of the manufacturing process for the media meant it was never
going to scale up. 1 Tbyte on a single tape reel seemed amazing
in 1991 but but the pace of development of magnetic tape rapidly
made it seem less and less interesting. The drive business was
bought by EMASS from Creo, then changed hands again too many times
for me to keep track of it.

There were other efforts in the USA with which I'm less familiar,
although I know Kodak and Polaroid were both involved on the media
side, and a number of storage vendors were talking about future
tape cartridge products in the late 1990s/early 2000s, including
Storagetek. That project also folded, but it seems some of the
key players went off and founded/joined (I'm unclear which) a
company called Micro Continuum, which generated a fair amount
of press interest in 2001. They're still around, it seems.

This 10-year-old post answers similar questions to yours,
and I suspect many of the answers are still valid:

http://groups.google.com.au/group/co...wse_thread/thr...



One of the efforts circa 1990 was something called Optical Paper.
Basically a very large capacity write-once optical tape. For use with
more conventional systems people were proposing log structured file
systems, and of course for archival systems write once a slow random
access is more acceptable. The biggest taps were 10-20cm wide and
thousands of meters long, making for a quite large raw capacity.

The log structured file systems largely anticipated a continuing
decrease in RAM costs relative to disk, which didn't happen (in fact
the trend reversed), and a limit to the growth of conventional disk
density (which also didn't happen). And the capacity demands from
archival systems never increased enough to support that (at least in a
broad way, and at the price points offered), and the general flakiness
of the technology didn't help either (although that was likely more
immaturity than an inherent limitation).

  #6  
Old August 1st 07, 02:04 AM posted to comp.arch.storage
Bryan Harris
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default Optical Tape Storage

On Jul 28, 6:38 am, Max Niederhofer wrote:
Dear comp.arch.storage'rs,

I have searched the group for information but have failed to come up
with much. I wanted to ask what the current thinking was on optical
tape storage. Who are the people developing it? Is there a possibility
that it will replace magnetic tapes? Who do you see as early adopters?
What are some of the barriers to widespread usage? What are the
relevant substitutes?

I would be much obliged for any and all information, links to web
content or people who would be happy emailing about this subject.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tape
http://groups.google.com.au/group/co...b7b22c8607d3dc

 




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