Once the latency requirement goes past ... i dunno, a few seconds? "Insh'allah" time frames; tape comes in and stomps all over the competition with its space / cost tradeoff. Dismountable media and a mechanism to swap tapes (even a meatsicle if need be) just has too many advantages to compete with.
Gets me thinking tho: Why stop at 5.25in drives? Let's go back to washing machine sized units or even bigger. Let's stack platters so dense and heavy that we can use the spindle as a flywheel UPS system too.
Or how about making a truly gigantic tape spool? Perhaps kevlar threads impregnated with iron could serve as "tape" and we could spin kilometers of that onto a spool.
Gets me thinking tho: Why stop at 5.25in drives? Let's go back to washing machine sized units or even bigger. Let's stack platters so dense and heavy that we can use the spindle as a flywheel UPS system too.
Or how about making a truly gigantic tape spool? Perhaps kevlar threads impregnated with iron could serve as "tape" and we could spin kilometers of that onto a spool.