OK, so you're probably not using tape cartridges to back up all your data at home. But archival organizations and even cloud services still use tape to store data, thanks in no small part to its reliability and comparatively low price. Sony has just announced a new record-breaking tape, capable of storing up to 185TB on one cartridge--74 times more than current tapes.
Currently, magnetic tapes use a thin layer of crystals on their surfaces--measuring tens of nanometers--to backup data at around 2Gb per square inch. This new tape, however, has decreased those necessary particles down to just seven nanometers. The result is a film capable of storing data at a rate of 148Gb per square inch.
