Media

For the last 50 years, tape media has been used to hold data for the IT community. Media has gone through numerous technical improvements with massive gains in capacity and speed, but the underlying concept of a magnetically modified roll of chemically treated plastic tape remains in place. Over time, tape will degrade, and at some point, will begin to show I/O errors rendering that information inaccessible. This is a concern when compliance is a consideration because the integrity of the media must be in place for at least as long as compliance regulations require.

Tape has the additional limitation of being sequential in operation, which means data is written on the tape in a serial manner. Tape can never be considered online even if a tape is mounted in the tape drive; the process of streaming to the proper location on the tape can require a substantial amount of time because this is a mechanical process.