Magnetic Tape

Magnetic Tape is the oldest form of secondary storage device. It is one of the popular storage medium for storing large amount of sequential data. It is also used as a backup storage for data stored on on-line storage device.

The magnetic tape medium is a plastic ribbon usually 1/2 inch or 1/4 inch wide and 50 to 2400 feet long. It is coated with a magnetizable recording material such as iron-oxide or chromium dioxide. Data are recorded on the tape in the form of tiny invisible magnetized and non-magnetized spots on the coated surface of the tape.

Advantages :

1. Non-volatile memory.

2. Volumenous data can be stored.

Disadvantages :

1. Only sequential data processing.

2. Complex mechanism required.

3. After few days the data can be mounted to tape, we need to recall the data to store it into hard disk as and when required.