Cassette tapes may have faded into oblivion long ago, but magnetic tape storage still has a key role to play behind the scenes. Extremely high density tapes are used by corporations and government agencies for archival purposes because they're cheaper, more power efficient, and more reliable than disk-based storage.
And now Sony has achieved an incredible storage capacity of 18.5GB per square inch with its latest magnetic tapes — over five times the record set in 2010 by IBM, and 74 times greater than tapes typically used in archival storage today (like the one pictured above). With that kind of density, one small data cartridge can hold a monumental 185TB of data, though Sony hasn't commercialized the technology yet. Nevertheless, that's not too shabby for a storage medium that's been around for over 60 years.