Sony Tape Technology Able to Store 185TB in LTO Cartridge

Sony Corporation announced that by independently developing a soft magnetic underlayer with a smooth interface using sputter deposition*3, it has succeeded in creating a nano-grained*4 magnetic layer with fine magnetic particles and uniform crystalline orientation.

This enabled Sony to develop magnetic tape technology that achieves the world’s highest*1 areal recording density for tape storage media of 148Gb/in². It is equivalent to approximately 74 times the capacity of current mainstream coated magnetic tape storage media, and makes it possible to record more than 185TB*2 of data per data cartridge*3.

Sony will jointly announce these results with IBM Corporation, who assisted with measuring and assessing the recording density of this new technology, at the INTERMAG Europe 2014 international magnetics conference held in Dresden, Germany beginning on May 4.

In recent years, the rapid recovery of data systems such as databases and data servers following natural disasters, as well as secure management of information has become ever important, and companies around the world are proceeding to build new data systems. In addition, the expansion of cloud services and the creation of new markets to utilize big data have led to a growing need for a storage media which can store large amounts of information.

Magnetic tapes with a coating of magnetic powder measuring tens of nm applied to the top of the film are currently considered the mainstream form of tape storage media. LTO-6 high-end LTO Ultrium format data cartridges that are based on this technology utilize a linear recording system (uncompressed) and have an areal recording density of approximately 2Gb/in², with a total recording capacity of 2.5TB (uncompressed). Until now, recording density of this type of media was increased by enhancing the miniaturization technologies that enable the size of magnetic particles on which data is stored to be decreased. Although coated magnetic tape is highly suited for mass production, the development of technologies capable of further reducing the size of magnetic particles in order to increase recording density in the future has become a significant challenge.

Sony has developed a new vacuum thin film forming technology which is able to form extremely fine crystal particles with the aim of creating a practical, next generation tape storage media. This newly developed magnetic tape technology uses sputter deposition, a type of vacuum thin film forming technology, to generate multiple layers of crystals with a uniform orientation on a polymer film with thickness of less than 5?m.

Until now, when the sputter method was used to deposit a thin film of fine magnetic particles on a polymer film, roughness on the surface of the soft magnetic underlayer caused the orientation of the crystals in the underlayer above it to become non-uniform. This in turn caused non-uniform crystalline orientation and variations in the size of the magnetic particles (grain) in the nano-grained magnetic layer directly above the underlayer, and prevented increases in recording densities.

By optimizing sputter conditions and independently developing a soft magnetic underlayer with a smooth interface, Sony has made it possible to minimize disparities in crystalline length and growth. This enabled Sony to create a nano-grained magnetic layer composed of fine magnetic particles with an average size of 7.7nm. When the magnetic tape created using this technology was measured and evaluated using an exploratory recording and assessment device, this new media was shown to achieve the world’s highest areal recording density of 148Gb/in², equivalent to approximately 74 times the capacity of conventional coated tape media for storage.

Sony will continue to work towards commercializing this next generation tape storage media, as well as the development of increasingly advanced thin layer deposition technologies based on the sputter method, with the aim of increasing recording densities even further.

*1: As of April 30, 2014.
*2: When compared to a LTO-6 high-end LTO Ultrium format data cartridge utilizing a linear recording system (uncompressed). When converted to one LTO-6 cartridge.
*3: The sputter method is one form of thin film deposition. Electrostatic discharge is used to force argon (Ar) ions to collide with the material (target), and the materials generated from the collision become the thin layer deposited on the substrate.
*4: Magnetic particles of a few nm in size

Comments

Areal density of hard disk drives always was much greater in comparison of tape.

For example LTO-6, revealed in August 2012, is at 2.1Gb/in² and Seagate 2.5-inch Spinpoint M9T HDD at 950Gb/in² or 452X more because it's easier to pack securely bits on a rigid media with a rigid disk head rather than on a flexible media with bigger parallel magnetic heads.

Up to now the Oracle StorageTek T10000D tape drive, launched in September 2013, uses highest tape media capacity, 8.5TB, in front of IBM TS1140 with cartridge up to 4TB, both of them with proprietary technology. The latest LTO format LTO-6 culminates at 2.5TB and two more generation are on the roadmap of the LTO consortium, LTO-7 with 6.4TB of capacity, and then, the last one, LTO-8, with 12.8TB. But the consortium never reveals when they will appear.

The Sony's announcement at 148Gb/in² is impressive, authorizing to store 185TB in an LTO cartridge or 74 times more than LTO-6. Sony didn't say if its new sputter deposition technology will be apply to LTO but LTO is cited in the press release.

If this happens finally, just one tape cartridge will be able to backup with ease the highest capacity HDD (6TB). It' not the case since several years with capacity of LTO increasing rather slowly.

But are we going to see effectively this high-capacity tapes from Sony and when? We always wary of these announcements. There were already two of them in the past years that have not yet come to nothing:

In January 2010, Fujifilm announced that, in cooperation with IBM, they have demonstrated a world record in data density on linear magnetic tape, 29.5Gb/in², with magnetic tape media developed using the BaFe particle employing nanocubic technology. The demonstration points to the possibility of developing a single LTO cartridge capable of holding 35TB of uncompressed, at this time at least 44 times the amount of data that the LTO-4 cartridge holds.

Also in 2010, Hitachi Maxell demonstrated a 50TB capacity LTO-class tape using perpendicular magnetic recording technology.

In October 2012, IBM spoke about a technology demonstration of a 125TB tape with Fujifilm for the media, increasing the sensitivity and bit granularity of the R/W heads and shrinking the physical size of the bits to 100Gb/in².

And here also, there is no date of the release of any final product.

Fujifilm, Sony are the specialists - and the only one - of computer tape media, a market that's going down since several years as it is losing its biggest market, backup, to remain concentrate only on archiving in the computer and A/V sectors. Between these tape makes, it's a war to sign OEMs, especially HP and IBM. This announcement by Sony is not good news for Fujifilm, main supplier of tapes for IBM (IBM 3592 and LTO), and also for Oracle StorageTek tape drives.

TDK, that was supplier of partner Imation, withdraw from LTO and Blu-ray businesses in 1Q14 and Maxell is apparently also not anymore in tape manufacturing.

IBM never manufacured tape media to our knowledge, but has a R&D team focused on tape drives and especially strong on tape heads. The LTO technology was initially based on Big Blue's Ultrium technology. HP and maybe Tandberg are also manufacturing LTO drives, Oracle being only making its own high-end units.

Sony, on its side, missed completely the tape drive sector after quite a success in helical scan units for data (4mm DDS DAT and 8mm AIT and VXA), all of them discontinued. Maybe do you remember the incredible announcement of Super AIT-2 with 500GB in a single-reel cartridge, in 2003! And the roadmap was for 4TB in 2008! Without any OEM, it remains a proprietary technology and died.

The same Sony is also betting on optical disc for archiving. Last March it said it was working with Panasonic on the Archival Disc, which will hold 1TB of capacity in 12cm optical disc.

Note: all capacities here cited are native, without compression.