Tape drive

Tape drives can be connected to a computer with SCSI, Fibre Channel, SATA, USB, FireWire, FICON, or other interfaces.

Many computers had an interface to store data via an audio tape recorder, typically on Compact Cassettes.

Simple dedicated tape drives, such as the professional DECtape and the home ZX Microdrive and Rotronics Wafadrive, were also designed for inexpensive data storage.

If the condition repeats, the resulting back-and-forth tape motion resembles that of shining shoes with a cloth.

Computer processing power and available memory were usually insufficient to provide a constant stream, so tape drives were typically designed for start-stop operation.

Early drives used very large spools, which necessarily had high inertia and did not start and stop moving easily.

The long thin loops of tape hanging in these vacuum columns had far less inertia than the two reels and could be rapidly started, stopped and repositioned.

Simple analog cassette audio tape recorders were commonly used for data storage and distribution on home computers at a time when floppy disk drives were very expensive.

In 2011, Fujifilm and IBM announced that they had been able to record 29.5 billion bits per square inch with magnetic-tape media developed using Barium Ferrite (BaFe) particles and nanotechnologies, allowing drives with true (uncompressed) tape capacity of 35 TB.

In 2014, Sony and IBM announced that they had been able to record 148 billion bits per square inch with magnetic tape media developed using a new vacuum thin-film forming technology able to form extremely fine crystal particles, allowing true tape capacity of 185 TB.

[19][20] On December 15, 2020, Fujifilm and IBM announced a Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) technology able, in theory, to store 580 TB per tape cartridge.