Magnetic tape might be waning compared to HDDs and SSDs, but that doesn't mean research on the format is dead-- not when Sony reveals "nano-grained" magnetic tape allowing storage capacities of up to 185TB per cartridge.

In comparison, current tape storage reaches maximum recording capacities of 2.5TB.

A co-development with IBM, the tape is made via "sputter deposition," a vacuum thin film form technology allowing the formation of extremely fine crystal particles with a uniform orientation on a thin (5 micrometers) polymer film.

Further optimizing the process is a "soft magnetic underlayer with a smooth interface." The combination of technologies results in a tape with an areal recording density of approximately 74 times that of conventional storage tape, Sony says.

EMC previews its take on software-defined storage ahead of EMC World with "Project Liberty," VNX-based virtualised storage software promising rich data services, ease-of-management and flexible deployment models.

The company does provide much in actual details, but says software-defined VNX arrays can handle varied and changing workloads on platforms such as virtual servers and hybrid clouds.

One use case has the rapid spinning of multiple virtual array instances in order to speed up application testing and development. Such deployment can take place from anywhere, be it remote office, central office or cloud.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) launches the Continuous Cloud Infrastructure-- a software-defined storage architecture promising to help customers deal with cloud, mobility and big data .

It is based on the HDS storage virtualisation technology, and should provide a foundation for further software-defined storage development.

"In order to execute in this business defined world, IT teams are looking to new infrastructure strategies to deploy more continuous, adaptable and scalable infrastructure," HDS says. "Businesses need solutions that don't require constant and disruptive changes to the technology they support. And that is what we are delivering today."

Seagate starts shipping what it claims is the fastest 6TB enterprise HDD yet-- the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 equipped with next generation 12Gb/s SAS for a performance boost of up to 25% over similar capacity drives.

Designed for use in both replicated and RAID environments, the drive feature rotational vibration tolerance and enhanced error correction, as well as built-in security with Instant Secure Erase self-encryption and FIPS SED options.