Sony creates mega mixtape with magnetic tape tech that can fit up to 175 terabytes of data

Sony’s new magnetic tape technology development, announced by the company last week, means you’re going to need a lot of songs to fill up that mixtape.

While most of the tech world is buzzing about data storage solutions in the cloud, the Japanese tech hardware maker has been busy in the lab coming up with “magnetic tape technology that achieves the world’s highest areal recording density for tape storage media of 148 Gb/in² [gigabits per square inch].”

Sony Global announced the magnetic tape breakthrough in a media release last week and says far from being an excursion into retro tech, the new technology will play an important part in complementing data systems solutions.

“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 more important and companies around the world are proceeding to build new data systems,” Sony says in the statement.

“In addition, the expansion of cloud services and the creation of new markets to utilise big data have led to a growing need for a data storage media which can store large amounts of information.”

The magnetic tape advancement has been made possible by Sony’s development of a new vacuum thin film-forming technology, which can create extremely fine crystal particles layered in a uniform manner on a polymer film with a thickness of less than 5 micrometres ­– which in layman’s terms means you can probably fit the whole Led Zeppelin catalogue on one mighty mixtape.