Today is

By: Ikedi Ani-okoye

The use of tape for data storage and data recovery in the computer manufacture goes back many decades. Tape provided a firm and hardy means of storing code and data, along with a far lower cost-of-ownership than the procurable tough disk options.

Today the value of hard disk has plummeted, but tape storage is still recognised as the best acquirable form of long-term archival storage in terms of price and recoil.

Those of us who were formed long enough ago could remember treading gingerly, and talking in low-tones when departing the flooring of the computer building where the hard disks were housed. Disks were uncertain, low volume, and pricey to run whereas to acquire data from tapes was fast enough and potentially to work.

The concept of "near-line" storage developed, and still exists, in the world of mainframe, AS/400 and large scale UNIX computing. Years ago a petition to recover a record would finish in a communication popping up on the computer operator's screen to bring the opened roll tape labelled KV19473D and laden it on drive 15. The data was recovered from the tape after only a short holdup to the user.

These days the operator has been replaced by some form of robotic tape library, and the open reel tape by a tape cartridge that can be handled mechanically (for example IBM 3570 and 3590, STK 9840 and 9940, and of course LTO Ultrium and DLT). This process formulated into Hierarchal Storage Management or HSM and allows for "limitless" storage (as endless as you can afford space, tape drives and media).

With small systems, this includes some systems that would look pretty big today such as MicroVax, there was a more procedural use of tape data storage. Partly this was due to the price of robotic equipment, but mostly as the ascend of the mini and micro computer coincided with the start of the uprise in lowly price more certain hard disks and the concept of client/server and the daily tape backup as a originator or data only required when a failure occurred and so to refrain requiring tough drive data recovery work.