When it comes to magnetic tape storage capacity, smaller is larger. That is, as the magnetic particles that store data become smaller, more data can be stockpiled in the same amount of space.
Two leading tech giants put that simple principle to work and announced Wednesday that they have developed a magnetic tape cartridge boasting the most dense storage capacity of any media in the world. Fujifilm and IBM say research into a new material, strontium ferrite, led to the creation of a tape cartridge capable of storing 580 terabytes of data. That’s enough to store roughly 580 million books, according to an IBM blog post published Wednesday.
Considering there are about only 130 million books in existence today, that’ll leave plenty of room for extras.