The Ur-Guru pointed me to a January 23rd post on Engadget announcing IBM’s development of a 35-terabyte magnetic tape. That’s impressively huge, all right, but the first thing that crossed my mind was: tape is a linear medium. How long is it going to take to find and restore any particular file stored on a tape that large?

Okay, so they’re not really longer, just denser, but seriously—how does this address all the age-old problems with tape? It may remain a good option for large enterprises, especially if they’re configured for it already, but it’s way too much fuss and trouble for the average SOHO user.