Feb 1 2011
FUJIFILM Corporation (President and CEO: Shigetaka Komori) has announced that they have begun delivering the world's largest capacity of 5TB and the fastest transfer rate of 240MB/s Magnetic Tape “StorageTek T10000C Tape Cartridge” to Oracle Corporation.
This is the world's first Barium-Ferrite (BaFe) based Magnetic Tape for the enterprise tape drive system and will be available from Oracle.
Due to the rapid increase in the amount of data associated with the development of digital technology and numerous regulatory compliance rules (Sarbanes-Oxley, HiPAA, etc), the amount of data for back-up and archive applications is constantly increasing. Compared to the different storage media available, Magnetic Tape has many advantages such as capacity, portability, power savings and long-term archivability. This is why it has been used for many years in various business environments including government, banking, broadcasting, healthcare, etc.
Ahead of other tape manufacturers, Fujifilm has advanced the development of BaFe Particles and BaFe Tape to achieve large capacity and excellent performance in long-term achievability resulting in the industry's largest tape cartridge. Magnetic Tape uses magnetic particles as a recording medium. For further capacity expansion, it is necessary to micrify each particle size to increase the recording density. Today, Metal Particle (MP) tape is the most popular among the Magnetic Tape market. With Metal Particle, it is very difficult to maintain coercivity when micrifying its particle size. This means it is extremely difficult to further expand the tape capacity using Metal Particles. On the other hand, BaFe Particle could expand the tape capacity dramatically without losing its excellent magnetic properties such as high coercivity, high frequency and lower noise compared with Metal Particle. Moreover, Fujifilm has advanced its unique NANOCUBIC technology to achieve ultra-smooth thin magnetic layer by coating micrified BaFe Particles uniformly which rapidly increased the storage areal density resulting in the storage capacity of 5TB. This capacity is more than three times the data capacity when compared with 1.5TB LTO Ultrium5 data cartridge and five times the data capacity when compared with 1.0TB StorageTek T10000B tape. This is well over the typical capacity increase trend which usually doubles within 2 - 3 years. This proves that BaFe is superb in contributing to the capacity expansion and promising its potential advantage for the future tape storage market.
The new “StorageTek T10000C Tape Cartridge” using BaFe particles can be archived for more than 30 years. Since BaFe Particle is oxide and chemically stable, its magnetic characteristics do not degrade over time under varying storage environments. Moreover, by creating micro asperity evenly on the ultra-smooth tape surface, a higher durability level was achieved. And by modifying a mechanical cartridge component, cartridges can be loaded and unloaded for more than 25,000 cycles, further extending the cartridge durability.
Fujifilm will continue to take the lead in the development of BaFe Particle as well as BaFe Tape and NANOCUBIC Technology in order to expand the capacity of data storage.
Fujifilm contributed the world's first and highest tape capacity with the following key technologies:
- Achieving 5TB by adopting BaFe Particles and advanced NANOCUBIC technologies:
Fujifilm's unique NANOCUBIC technologies, “NANO Particle technology”, “NANO coating technology” and “NANO dispersion technology” were advanced to disperse micrified BaFe Particles uniformly which can eliminate the tape surface waviness and uneven thickness in order to achieve ultra-smooth thin magnetic layer. This increased the recording density dramatically.
- Succeeded in the long-term archivability by adopting BaFe Particles and new base-film.
BaFe Particle is oxide and is excellent in chemical stability against environmental changes. Influences within the storage environment do not affect the magnetic tape property which means that more than 30 years archivability is possible with BaFe Particle based tape. Moreover, Fujifilm selected a new base-film that is excellent in dimensional stability which also contributed to the long-term archivability.
- Newly designed tape surface and advanced cartridge component led to higher durability levels
Micro asperity was created evenly on the ultra-smooth tape surface to achieve high durability levels which enables the tape to run very stable in the drive. In addition, a cartridge component was modified to ensure the cartridge can be loaded and unloaded for more than 25,000 cycles which increased the durability level of cartridge.
Source: http://www.fujifilm.com/