Open Source Magnetic Tape Data Storage

Basics

• Create magnetic tape using iron powder and some sort of plastic film
• Slower, but low tech to create.
• The D-VHS standard had a capacity of 50 GB (And this may not be fully optimized due to the world jumping to optical/SSDs etc) which is comparable (at least if you only count capacity) to a cheap "thumb drive". Granted the D-VHS like format would be a bit large, but the ease of creation may make up for this.
• The one fault off tape media is that it likes sequential access rather than random access Read this

What type of scanning to use?

• Linear Scanning is less likely to fail, but less data storage dense
• Helical Scanning is more data dense, but can catastrophically fail, and be hard to maintain

Size (Digital Capacity)

?mb-?gb Cassette Life Format

• Here wikipedia discusses the application of audio cassette type formats to data storage.
• Consumer/Portable Devices/Portable Data Collection Tools

50GB D-VHS Like Format

• Consumer/Pro-sumer
• VHS Form could hold quite a bit (see below) and be familiar to many devices (off the shelf or hacked)

Giant Roll of Doom

• Beast to handle, but lots of data super cheap + easily
• Desktop/Benchtop/Skid Mounted
• Pro-sumer/Professional/Commercial/Industrial

Useful Links

• Wikipedia Page On Magnetic Data Storage Theory
• Wikipedia Page On VHS
• Wikipedia Page On D-VHS (or Digial VHS)
• Wikipedia Page On a Current Use Case of the below more modern and high tech tape formats
• Wikipedia Page On IBM's most recent Tape Drive Lineup
• [https://hackaday.io/event/28313-reverse-engineering-the-digital-compact-cassette Hackaday Article #1 (Reverse Engineering a Digital Cassette