Our current lifestyles have become more depend upon the transfer of digital information every day. Every keystroke a doctor makes into a database, each purchase recorded by credit card company, and every design project a professional studio wants to keep a long-term record of needs to be stored and kept reliably for a number of years. It is common for us to store our information on hard disk drives. However, server tape media has become more popular among information professionals who specialize in the long-term storage of data.

If you are looking to find out what tape data storage is, when the best times to use it are, and why it has become more popular among people looking to maintain lots of information in a database, then this article will fill you in on everything you need to know. Organizations rely on large databases to maintain the seamless continuity of their business operations. These large databases are often digital hard drives that can be taken down by multiple different types of disruptions. Issues from viruses, hackers, corrupt files, operation system updates, and damage caused by fire or water can bring all business activity to complete stop. 

Reliable methods to back up data ensure that a company will be able to function normally and reestablish itself quickly if something goes wrong. However, the current method of using physical hard drives to do so have become increasingly expensive. The amount of data that needs to be stored continues to increase daily. Data storage technology has expanded to include virtual machines that have the capacity to host multiple servers and compound the need for reliable data storage. Backup storage on disk drives don’t last long, and it has had a limited capacity. Data storage tape has become popular because it is inexpensive and has a high capacity in comparison to disk drives.

Modern companies use tape to store their data when they need high-capacity data storage methods that offer high performance at a low cost. It is common for a magnetic tape data storage cartridge to have the capacity to store six terabytes of data at a third of the cost it would take to do so with a comparable hard drive that etches data into a disk or cells in a solid state drive. 

Companies can make their systems much more efficient and streamline their processes by removing data they don’t need on location. Insurance industry compliance laws that require large intuitions like hospitals to keep health records can use data tape storage as a method to remove information that is less critical, and would otherwise clog their network with the information they don’t need immediate access to. Data tape storage is also ideal because it is common for the manufacturers to ensure the product remains viable for at least 30 years or more.

Increased efficiency from data storage methods with tape cartridges allows companies a reliable, cost effective method to ensure their ability to recover from serious issues for decades. The technology may be old, but new advances have made it much more reliable. The increased savings and reliability of tape data storage make it a strong choice for professional computing.