What seems at first like a logical move to modernize the government's archives may in fact be an ill-advised decision.

The tape is read by magnetic stripe readers incorporated into ATMs, identification readers and payment terminals. Due to the daily, heavy wear these cards receive, the digital recording on the ...

You can also physically make it WORM), which makes it read only and magnetic tapes are impervious to natural and man-made EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse). Forget about SSD (too expensive) and optical ...

Half a century later, magnetic tape remains surprisingly well-used in government. NASA uses it to back up vast amounts of ...

Earlier this month, DOGE announced on X it would save $1 million annually by converting 14,000 magnetic tapes of government records into “permanent modern digital records.” The problem?

London-based Magnetic Scrolls was an early pioneering ... First, he needed to recover a copy of the original source code from the backup tapes. But there was a problem, it turns out that the ...

Why it matters: Many users, including staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), likely consider magnetic tape storage severely outdated. Despite being around for several decades ...