“In terms of costs, storing data on tape is pennies per gigabyte and when not in use, tape requires no energy unlike hard disks and flash,” IBM wrote in a 2020 article dedicated to the lasting efficiency of magnetic tape storage. An angry debate among experts and critics has been sparked, however, by DOGE’s decision to migrate legacy information away from magnetic tape and to digital storage.
And that magnetic tape, a technology many believed was dead, is actually living on, and saving us from today’s data storage problems in a way few other things can. The solution creates a physical “airgap,” which ensures a separation between the data that is stored on it and the cyber criminals that are trying to access data via the internet. According to Shawn Brume of IBM, if you spent “40 years in the desert,” magnetic tapes would still be readable. The durability of tape against the elements as well as a shelf life of thirty years of appropriate storage, means that in terms of archival requirements, tape is the best there is.
The affordability of magnetic tape is another major selling point. Available from $60 a tape for 12TB of uncompressed storage, these offer business and institutional enterprise scale high capacity storage for up to one-fourth the cost of cloud solutions. Moreover, tape storage creates no ongoing energy costs, as opposed to cloud servers and hard drives that require constant electricity and cooling. IBM’s ever-expanding innovation of its tape technology also helps it stay relevant, the company had recently announced fresh tapes that will be able to store up to a staggering 580 terabytes, an immense leap over the average tape in 2018 holding around 15 terabytes.
The fraying state of data permanence is alarming in a government context. Digital systems are in their essence vulnerable to service interruptions, hardware failures and to be hacked. “permanent digital records” is something of a misnomer, and when computer drive space becomes an issue, many digital records and irreplaceable historical and legal information can vanish in seconds. The percentage of hyperlinks that go nowhere when clicked has been given the name link rot and it has already affected more than 66% of hyperlinks the world has ever made to websites born in the past nine years.
While these systems are scalable and accessible, they also have substantial drawbacks. In fact a recent study showed that cloud storage solutions are open to cyberattacks, with 45% of the breaches happening in cloud systems. Moreover, cloud storage incurs a recurring expenditure that compounds annually, making it not ideal for archival purposes over time. For example, Amazon’s S3 Glacier Deep Archive, among the cheapest cloud storage available, charges monthly for each terabyte, imposing exponential costs over a ten-year period.
The irony of DOGE’s most recent move is that instead of reducing costs, it’ll probably raise them. At least part of this is due to servers being needed, in addition to the digital system hardware which becomes obsolete every few years, on energy-consuming servers which can, in the long run, consume government funds. This transition also comes at the expense of the safety and stability of magnetic tape, which remains immune to ransomware and loss attacks due to its offline nature.
This resurgence of tape storage is well backed by the use cases of businesses ranging from AI researchers to compliance-driven verticals. “Tape storage technology’s adaptability, resilience and enduring relevance make it a worthy contender in the data storage arena.” says Matt Ninesling, Senior Director, Tape Portfolio Management at Spectra Logic Its ability to address escalating requirements for scalable, secure, and sustainable storage systems gives it relevance in today’s data explosion era.
The stakes are especially high for government archives. What this means for history and your personal data legal records and data that can be accessed by others — is that we need a storage solution that is economically viable and digital obsolescence-proof. As sites like the Internet Archive have undertaken, the work of preserving digital material is a gargantuan one, and a vital one. But, as well, please do not place complete faith in digital systems, for if we do not have strong offline systems, such as magnetic tape, to back these files up the archives may just figuratively undermine themselves within a couple of decades!
DOGE’s move has been illustrative of how progress doesn’t always towards modernization. Between efficiency and risk there is a narrow path, and while digital storage can be a great convenience, the expiration of magnetic tape could be bad news for the long game. As IBM themselves put it (and they should know), “data recorded on tape today will still be readable in 30 years.” The statement is not just a testament to tape’s reliability for archivists, government officials and data storage professionals, but a call to arms to question the true price of digital evolution.
In conclusion, a hybrid tape-digital infrastructure could open the door to a cleaner and more secure data storage future. Working together, they ensure that important information is retained in an increasingly digitised environment. Whatever happens in the debate, one thing is certain: there is no simple path to replace magnetic tape archives.
