One day we may finally reach the limit of how much data we can fit on a physical storage device, but IBM Corp. and Sony Corp. have teamed up to prove that we have not reached that day yet.

The two companies revealed today that they have developed the technology to store a record-breaking 330 terabytes of uncompressed data on a cartridge small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

IBM took advantage of some cutting-edge technology to achieve this feat, but the device itself uses one of the oldest storage media in computing: magnetic tape. IBM has been producing magnetic tape systems for more than 60 years, but its latest invention manages to cram 201 gigabytes into one square inch of tape. According to a release from Sony, this is more than 20 times the amount of storage density offered by conventional magnetic tape storage media.

Magnetic tape may seem like an outdated form of storage. After all, magnetic tape is far slower than newer storage options such as hard disk drives or solid state drives. However, tape does offer one serious benefit: longevity. Tape can store data for very long periods of time with little risk of corruption, degradation or drive failure. This longevity makes tape particularly popular for long-term backups of important data.

As the volume of data generated by companies continues to expand, IBM’s new technology ensures that tape is still viable even today.

“This really demonstrates the potential to continue scaling tape technology basically at historical rates of doubling the cartridge capacity every two years for at least the next 10 years,” said Mark Lantz (pictured), manager of advanced tape technologies at IBM. “That’s really good news for our customers that rely on tape technology. It’s kind of an integral part of their storage infrastructure to really preserve their data in a cost-effective manner.”

Lantz noted that tape is becoming an increasingly popular storage media for the cloud, both as a backup for data that is stored on other systems and as an archive of “cold” data that does not need to be accessed often. This explains why IBM is still interested in the technology, as the cloud is part of the company’s “strategic imperatives” segment. This segment includes newer technologies that still present growth opportunities for the now 106-year-old company, which has recently been struggling to adapt to the constantly changing tech industry.

Photo: IBM