Additionally, a different kind of magnetic tape was used as a method of storing large amounts of recording media such as video, audio, and computer code until the development of modern information technology. Magnetic tape in computer and secondary storage applications is being used less and less nowadays. However, it is still sometimes used as a medium for archiving, backups, and data storage. This is because it is a capacious medium and therefore provides more storage space than alternatives like USB sticks and rewritable disk drives. However, with the rise in popularity of cloud-based services, tasks like routine computer backups are becoming increasingly less likely to use a magnetic tape storage solution.
In terms of magnetic tape capacity, up to fifteen terabytes of data can be stored on a single roll of tape. To put that into context, modern desktop PC hard drives typically have a capacity of anything from 1 to 16 terabytes. Despite this impressive magnetic tape storage capacity, alternative storage mediums are often preferred nowadays due to the various limitations of magnetic media.
It should also be noted that these kinds of storage devices have drawbacks as a data retrieval medium. It is a ‘serial’ access product, meaning that the reading device must fast-forward through the magnetic recording tape from the beginning to access a particular piece of data. This is a slow and laborious process in comparison to RAM (random access memory) which can be accessed in any order.
