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| Science & Technology |
| 'Insane' amounts of data spurs new storage tech |
| 2024-06-13 |
| [BBC] The year 2039 might seem like a long way off, but Ian Crawford is already planning for it. It will mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two - a big year for his employer, the Imperial War Museum. Mr Crawford is chief information officer at the museum, and oversees a project to digitise its huge collection of pictures, audio and film. With a collection of around 24,000 hours of film and video, and 11 million photographs, it's a vast task. And in the run-up to 2039, World War II material will be a priority. Making digital copies of those historical sources is vital as the original copies degrade over time, and will, one day, be lost forever. "When you've got the only copy, you want confidence that your storage system is reliable," says Ian Crawford. The amount of data needed for such long-term storage is growing all the time, as the latest scanners can record documents and films in great detail. This deluge of data is not just hitting museums - it's pouring down everywhere.Businesses are buying more space for back-up data, hospitals need somewhere to store records, government needs a place to stash increasing amounts of information. "We are continuing to create insane amounts of data," says Simon Robinson, principal analyst at research firm Enterprise Strategy Group. "For most organisations - it varies a lot - their data volume is doubling every four to five years. And in some industries it is growing much faster than that," he says. Data that needs to be held for a long time is not stored in traditional data centres, those vast warehouses, with racks of servers and blinking lights. Those operations are designed for data that needs to be accessed and updated frequently. Instead, the most popular way to keep data for the long-term is on tape. In particular a format known as LTO (Linear Tape Open), the latest version being called LTO-9. The tapes themselves are not unlike old VHS tapes, but a bit smaller and more square. Inside the cassette is a kilometre of magnetic tape, capable of storing 18 terabytes of data. That's a lot - just one tape can hold the same amount of data as almost 300 standard smartphones. The Imperial War Museum in Duxford uses a tape system from Spectra Logic. The machine, around the size of a large wardrobe, can hold up to 1,500 LTO tapes. Such LTO systems dominate the market for long-term storage. They have been around for decades, and have proved themselves to be reliable. It's also pretty cheap, which is important as generally customers want to pay as little as possible for long-term storage. Nevertheless some are convinced it can be done better. In a former wallpaper factory in Chiswick, west London, a start-up firm has been developing a long-term storage system that uses lasers to burn tiny holograms into a light-sensitive polymer. Chief executive Charlie Gale points out that with magnetic tape, data can only be stored on the surface, whereas holograms can store data in multiple layers. "You can do things called multiplexing, whereby you can layer multiple sets of information in one space. That's really kind of the superpower of what we're doing. And we believe we can put more information in less space than ever before," he says. HoloMem's polymer blocks can handle extreme temperatures, without the data becoming corrupted - between -14C to 160C. By comparison, magnetic tape needs to be kept between 16C and 25C, which means significant heating and cooling costs, particularly in countries with extreme temperatures. Tape also needs replacing after around 15 years, whereas the polymer is good for at least 50 years. Mr Gale notes that, as the laser chemically changes the polymer, the data can't be tampered with, once it has been written. Holomem's prototype system, which will be able to store and retrieve data, will be ready later this year. Mr Gale says the cost of the system has been kept down by using standard, widely available components, including the laser - so, he's confident that HoloMem will be able to match, or beat the costs of magnetic tape. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #5 Tape also needs replacing after around 15 years, whereas the polymer is good for at least 50 years. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2024-06-13 16:38 |
| #4 The chance much of that data ever needs to be looked at again is small. As the volume of historical data climbs with the passage of time it's a damn good thing AI agents can be thrown at the job of recovering any potential needles from those haystacks. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-06-13 13:10 |
| #3 I can assure you that LTO tapes will deteriorate over time. After about 6 years we were seeing 5% loss--only partial read. Possibly we could have recovered more with a more sophisticated tape reader with the capability of skipping bad spots and re-orienting itself, but the drives' controllers didn't allow that. |
| Posted by: James 2024-06-13 12:55 |
| #2 Archiving WWII typewriters sounds so much better than storing everyone's phone data. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-06-13 10:23 |
| #1 To anyone who ever had a VHS player, tape storage is a non-starter. |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2024-06-13 08:57 |