... data were stored on tapes.
In the beginning, there was no disk (no hard drives), and when there began to be disk, it was very expensive.
In those dark and distant pre-disk days, information was stored on tapes. Hundreds and hundreds of tapes. Thousands and millions of tapes. Think of the warehouse shot at the end of Raiders of the lost Ark................
Keeping track of tapes was a big job. What was on each one? Where were they stored? Fetching and carrying and storing and backing up tapes were significant, non-trivial tasks.
Over time, tapes got smaller, and held more data. Data was moved from big round 9-track tape to cartridge tape. (Each 9-track was loaded on a tape reader/writer, so its data could be read and then written onto a cartridge tape which had been loaded on a [different] tape reader/writer. Persons had to do much of this tape-shifting, by hand.) Cartridge tapes in their turn were replaced by even smaller tapes, requiring the same laborious data-copying process.
Eventually, disk got cheaper. A LOT cheaper. Astonishingly cheaper. Some tiny (but capacious) tapes will never be used -- they are obsolete in the face of amazingly cheap disk.
Tapes are nearly history. Almost all of our tapes have been copied to disk, and then shredded, leaving behind their empty racks. The rest will soon follow, leaving even more empty racks.
Goodbye tape, hooray disk!
We still have to know where the data are, but we no longer have to keep track of the physical location of hundreds and thousands of hard-copy objects. No longer have to physically load hard-copy objects to write or read or back up data.
Nowadays the data arrive, are distributed, and are backed up over the internet.
No longer do we have to shift hard-copy objects from here to there and back again, in order to read/write/back up information.
No longer do we have to wonder how badly the data are deteriorating, as all those tapes sit in a hot dusty warehouse...........
Hooray disk, indeed!
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