Tape Drives

A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. It is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability.

A tape drive provides sequential access storage, unlike a disk drive, which provides random access storage. A disk drive can move its read/write head(s) to any random part of the disk in a very short amount of time, but a tape drive must spend a considerable amount of time winding tape between reels to read any one particular piece of data. As a result, tape drives have very slow average seek times. Despite the slow seek time, tape drives can stream data to and from tape very quickly. For example, popular Linear Tape-Open drives can reach, as of 2010, continuous data transfer rates of up to 140 MB/s, which is comparable to hard disk drives.

DDS tape drive with 4 types of magnetic data storage media on top, from right hand side: 3.5" floppy disk (1.44 MB), 310m QIC DC tape (250 MB, ~6 mm wide, 1020 ft length), 112m Data8 tape (5 GB, 8 mm, 367 ft), 150m DDS-4 tape (20 GB, 4 mm, 492 ft)