To manage AI’s data hunger, data centers are rediscovering the benefits of VHS magnetic tapes: zero power consumption at rest, protection from ransomware and the ability to store up to 40 terabytes.
Those who grew up between the 80s and 90s will well remember the “VHS” video cassettes that had to be rewound before taking them back to the video store, as well as the tapes that got caught inside VCRs and the pencils that had to be inserted into the cassette tapes to untangle the annoying tangle. It seemed like a technology definitively consigned to the past, swept away, in order, by CDs, DVDs, flash memories, cloud and streaming platforms.
And instead magnetic tape is about to grow again thanks to the technology that most of all seems to belong to the future: artificial intelligence. The Japanese company Fujifilm has announced an investment of around 10 billion yen, over 60 million euros, to quintuple its production capacity of tapes for data storage by 2028 compared to 2025 levels. No video cassettes to insert into the television, however, much to the chagrin of nostalgics. Instead, these will be sophisticated professional cartridges that will be used by data centers and large cloud services to store enormous quantities of information.
Advanced VHS
The physical principle, however, is closely related to that of old video and music cassettes. The information, in fact, is recorded by modifying the orientation of tiny magnetic particles distributed on a very long tape, although modern LTO systems (Linear Tape-Open) are immensely more sophisticated. Fujifilm has been producing LTO Ultrium 10 since 2025 and uses magnetic particles so thin that a single cartridge can contain up to 40 terabytes of uncompressed data, roughly the equivalent of tens of thousands of high definition films.
The main limitation, however, remains what those who used a VHS know well: the tape is a sequential medium. To reach information you have to scroll to the point where it is recorded, while a hard disk or SSD can access files scattered in different locations much more quickly. This is why no one thinks of installing Windows or continually opening documents from an LTO cassette, yet the tape has its own usefulness: it is ideal for data that must be kept for a long time and rarely consulted.
Data hunger
And this is exactly where AI comes in. Training and using large models means producing and accumulating enormous amounts of information: training datasets, backups, processing logs, and business data that may need to be retained for years. Keeping everything continuously available on hard drives requires a lot of equipment turned on, powered, and cooled.
A magnetic cartridge, on the other hand, once written can be removed from the reader and placed in an automated library without practically consuming energy until it is needed again.
The cost per terabyte is also relatively low and tapes are intended for long-term archiving. There is also an additional advantage and it concerns safety. A cartridge physically disconnected from the network, in fact, creates a so-called air gapthat is, a material separation from the Internet, which can prevent ransomware (malicious software, or “malware”) from reaching and acquiring that copy of the data as well. It is for these reasons that, according to Fujifilm, large cloud operators and data centers are increasing and will increase the use of magnetic tape in the future.
Past future
We will thus witness a curious reversal of technological history. For everyday use we have gradually abandoned magnetic media because we wanted immediate access to photographs, music and documents, but now that we produce much more data than we can always keep “just a click away”, we rediscover the advantage of putting a portion aside and waiting a few more seconds when needed.
Fujifilm has been working on tapes since the 1950s and today holds, according to the company, the largest share of the world market for magnetic storage media. The announced investment is the largest ever made by the company in plants dedicated to LTO cartridges and will above all serve to increase production of the latest generation. In short, VHS is not really coming back and no one will have to adjust the tracking of the TV anymore, but in the age of artificial intelligence we have discovered that we need decades-old support.
