Cassette tapes seemed to be relegated to 1990s nostalgia lists along with floppy disks and Polly Pockets. That is, until Sony recently unveiled its record-breaking version, a 180-terabyte cartridge that can hold around 47 million songs.
Smashing the previous record held by a Fuji tape capable of 35 terabytes of data, the new cassette was showcased last weekend at InterMag Europe, a magnetics conference in Dresden, Germany, CNN reported.
The tape, which Sony and IBM worked on together, is the storage equivalent of 1,184 iPod Classics, Apple's largest version of the music device. By another measure, it could hold 3,700 movies on Blu-ray discs.
The cassette's technology works because the data-storing microscopic magnetic particles on the tape are shrunk, allowing for more room.
Unfortunately for music and movie buffs, the record-breaking tape won't exactly be making it to production soon, as its technology is more geared toward backing up large databases than storing a regular consumer's song library.
While the cassette, which stores 148GB of data per inch of tape, can easily house huge amounts of data, it's far less handy to record to or retrieve data from, CNN reported. Actually working with the tape would take a lot more time than just using digital storage programs and devices that average consumers are already used to.
But don't give up all hope--Sony also said that it is pursuing a commercial use for the "next generation tape" along with ways to use its tiny magnetic particles in other technologies.
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