Re: [ARSCLIST] IBM Claims 6.67 billion bits per square inch for data tape

[Jon Noring <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard L. Hess wrote:

> High density data tape still the "champ" according to this article:
>
> http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187203437

Wow.

Yesterday I posted about the space requirements to digitize 6 million
3 minute sides (probably the entire 78 era corpus). Each digitized
side occupies 52 megabytes in *losslessly* compressed (NOT lossy),
two-channel, 96k/24bit digital format.

Using the IBM figure of 6.67 billion bits, that works out to 16 sides
per inch of tape. So, over 30,000 feet of tape will hold the entire
corpus of 78 rpm recordings at the high-quality just mentioned. I
don't know how many feet of tape are on a typical tape reel or
cartridge (don't know what's done today -- I still think of the old 9
track tapes), but it would not surprise me if a typical reel/cartridge
has several hundred feet of tape. So we are not talking about that
many reels or cartridges -- a few dozen perhaps.

Jon Noring