If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
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
|
|||
|
|||
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
|
|||
|
|||
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
|
|||
|
|||
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
|
|||
|
|||
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
|
|||
|
|||
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 |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Offsite Tape Storage in Vancouver, BC | StreetMania | Storage (alternative) | 1 | February 2nd 07 08:26 AM |
Offsite Tape Storage in Vancouver, BC | StreetMania | Storage (alternative) | 10 | October 7th 06 02:09 AM |
Need help on Tape,Optical disk... | babi | Storage & Hardrives | 2 | May 23rd 06 02:02 AM |
Need help on Tape,Optical disk... | babi | Storage (alternative) | 2 | May 15th 06 12:04 PM |
DLT Tape Storage | Ed Cotton | Storage & Hardrives | 2 | January 24th 04 08:04 AM |