Fujifilm working on 400TB tape storage cartridge

Fujifilm is working on strontium ferrite-based tape storage instead of the currently used barium ferrite. With a new generation of tape storage, Fujifilm hopes to expand the capacity of a single cartridge to 400TB.

Fujifilm expects to introduce strontium ferrite, or SrFe, tape storage by 2027. The manufacturer thinks that strontium ferrite will play a role from LTO-10 onwards. Blocks & Files was the first to write about the announcement. LTO stands for Linear Tape-Open, the open standard for magnetic tape storage. There are several standards and LTO-8 generation tape cartridges are currently available, with up to 12TB raw storage capacity. The barium ferrite, or BaFe, currently in use is not yet in use: Fujifilm reports that it was already able to use this technique in 2015 to coat 220TB tapes.

With strontium ferrite, the company expects to be able to reduce the particles for tape storage by 40 percent while retaining or even improving the magnetic properties. Fujifilm uses the same methods with strontium ferrite as with barium ferrite for the synthesis of the molecules: grouping atoms and ions and aggregating molecules via a chemical reaction. Fujifilm compares the size of 1900nm³ for a BaFe particle for an LTO-7 tape, a size of 1600nm³ for the 220TB tape from 2015 and 900nm³ for a SrFe particle.

Fujifilm and Sony are the only two companies worldwide that still produce tapes for storage. Tape storage is still in use for the long-term archiving of large amounts of data, due to its longevity and relatively low cost.

Table prepared by AnandTech.