Magnetic Tape

Magnetic tape continues to evolve. 10 years ago, the big revolution was tape libraries. The current innovation is intelligent tape, tape with imbedded chips to let you know what is on the tape without reading it. Tape capacity continues to grow, but the challenges of filling a tape, and getting data off it quickly, remain.

There are two principal tape technologies, Linear and Helical Scan . The first two pages describe how these technologies work.

The next page tabulates some of the various Tape Drives on offer and the differences between them.

Then we discuss Tape Futures .

The next page discusses Tape Problems and how to resolve them.

Finally, if you use SUN StorageTek tape silos on an OS/390 mainframe, you will have discovered HSC, the mainframe controlling software. The last page discusses how to make HSC changes

There is a separate section for Virtual Tape.

Use the left hand frame to navigate between the pages.

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