When it comes to digital storage for long-term storage, people will probably say that hard disk storage is the best option for that.
But did you know that actually digital tape storage (tape storage) that uses magnetic tape is actually better than hard disk storage? It can not only hold digital data longer, but is more disaster-proof than a hard drive.
In fact, a report by Trendfocus via Storage Newsletter shows that for the long-term data storage sector, tape storage sales and usage are seen as far more popular than hard drives which are seen to have plummeted over the same year.
LTO (Linear Tape Open) tape storage sales sold by brands such as IBM, HPE and Quantum are reported to be 79 Exabytes which is a 14 percent year-on-year increase in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Tape storage is also seen as more cost-effective when compared to hard drives. It may not have the speed of accessing, reading and writing fast data, but for the purpose of long-term storage of data that will be accessed infrequently, an LTO-8 storage tape cartridge with eight tapes that are almost the same size as a 3.5-inch hard disk can store up to 350GB of data.
More interestingly, market analysts say that tape storage sales will continue to increase until 2027 with storage usage as high as 207.1 Exabyte by that year.
For the hard drive market, Trendfocus also said that hard drive sales continue to decline, where it recorded a decline not only for the consumer sector, but also for the data center market, with overall sales recording a 40 percent decline where companies such as Toshiba, Seagate and Western Digital sold around 35-36 million hard drives last year.