Magnetic Tape

Magnetic tape is the most commonly used sequential access secondary storage
medium. It is available in the form of Cassettes, Reel and Cartridges. Among these three, Reels are the most popular. The size of Tape is 0.5 inch wide and 2400 feet in length.

Magnetic tape is a plastic ribbon coated on one side with an iron oxide material
that can be magnetized. Data are recorded in the magnetic tape in the form of
small-magnetized spots. It utilizes the BCD (Binary coded Decimal) system in
recording digits, letters and other characters.

Similar to the tape used in our tape recorder, magnetic tape can be erased and resused again and again.

Advantages of Magnetic tapes :

1.      Magnetic tapes can be erased and reused.

2.      They are economical as far as cost per unit data item storage is concerned.

3.      The data density (number of bits stored per inch) is high.

4.      They have fast data transfer rate (the speed at which data can be transferred from the input medium to the CPU).

Disadvantages of magnetic tapes:

1. As the data in the magnetic tape is accessed sequentially, it is slow to access selected data.
2. Magnetic tapes can be adversely affected by dust, heat and humidity.
3. Contents of magnetic tapes cannot be read directly by humans.