From Tony Clarke
People handling tapes and cassettes tend to place them down flat. In my experience, data stored in this way is unreadable after just six weeks as the lower edge of the tape becomes deformed. If huge amounts of data are to be accumulated on tape (20 October, p 20) there must be a strict protocol to ensure correct storage.
You report that “Current projections by the trade body Information Storage Industry Consortium show that although hard drives will be able to store 3 terabytes apiece in a decade’s time…” Next to my desk is a trolley of 3-terabyte drives and a box of 4-TB drives: we’ve been selling them all year. Therefore I am writing this from the future. Now, the lottery results for 2017…
Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK
• IBM clarifies that this referred to hard drives that would be needed to build a data store for the Square Kilometre Array today, not in 2024. Apologies for the error.
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Canberra, ACT, Australia
