How Do I Transfer Data from a Computer to an External Hard Drive?

Computer data tape drives are data storage devices that read and write data on magnetic tape. Tape data storage is often used for offline archival data storage. Tape media typically has favorable unit costs and long archive stability.

Tape drives with a capacity of less than 1 megabyte were first used for data storage on mainframe computers in the 1950s. As of 2014, technology has been advanced enough to allow each cartridge to reach an uncompressed data capacity of 10TB or more.

In early computer systems, magnetic tape was used as the primary storage medium because, although drives were expensive, magnetic tape was cheap. Some computer systems run operating systems on tape drives such as DECtape. DECtape has a fixed size index block that can be rewritten without disturbing other blocks, so DECtape can be used like a slow disk drive.

Data tape drives can use advanced data integrity technologies such as multi-level forward error correction, stacking, and a linear serpentine layout for writing data to tape. The tape drive can be connected to the computer via SCSI, Fibre Channel, SATA, USB, FireWire, FICON or other interfaces. Tape drives are used with autoloaders and tape libraries to automatically load, unload, and store multiple tapes, and the amount of data that can be stored without manual intervention.

In the early days of home computing, floppy disks and hard drives were very expensive. Many computers have an interface for storing data through a tape recorder, usually on a small cassette tape. Simple, dedicated tape drives such as professional DECtape and home ZX Microdrive and Rotronics Wafadrive are also designed for cheap data storage. However, falling disk drive prices have made these alternatives obsolete.

Magnetic tape is usually housed in a casing called a cassette or a cassette, such as a 4-track cassette and a small cassette. A cassette contains a tape to provide different audio content using the same player. The housing made of plastic sometimes has metal plates and parts that can easily handle fragile tapes, making them more convenient and stronger than spools with bare tape. When floppy disk drives are very expensive, simple analog mini cassette recorders are often used for data storage and distribution on home computers. Commodore Datasette is a dedicated version of the data using the same media.

Manufacturers usually use data compression techniques to specify the capacity of the tape; for different data (usually 2: 1 to 8: 1), the compressibility will be different, and some types of actual data may not get the specified capacity .

As of 2014, tape drive technology with higher capacity is still being developed.

In 2011, Fujifilm and IBM announced that they have been able to record 29.5 billion bits per square inch using tape media developed by BaFe particles and nanotechnology, allowing drives with 35TB of true (uncompressed) tape capacity. The technology is not expected to be commercialized for at least a decade.

In 2014, Sony and IBM announced that they had been able to record 148 gigabytes per square inch of tape media, which was developed using new vacuum film forming technology to form extremely fine crystal grains with a true tape capacity of 185TB.