Fujifilm will invest about ¥10 billion, roughly $63 million, to raise its storage tape production capacity fivefold compared with fiscal 2025, Ars Technica reports. The company attributes the demand to the exponential volume of data generated by generative AI. The project at the Odawara plant runs from 2026 to 2028, mainly for LTO Ultrium10 tape. Fujifilm notes that large cloud providers are expanding their use of tape and that physically isolating cartridges protects against ransomware.

What it means: Magnetic tape looks like technology from another era, but it is still the cheapest way to keep very large volumes of data for the long term with little energy use. AI lifts demand in two ways: companies keep more data for training and audits, and the files they generate multiply. At the same time, prices of hard drives and memory have risen because of data centre demand, which makes tape more attractive. The security argument matters just as much. A cartridge taken out of the drive and stored separately cannot be encrypted by ransomware, however deep an attacker gets into the network. For Greek businesses with large archives, such as hospitals, accounting firms, engineers and media, the rule of keeping one offline copy applies whatever the medium. For smaller volumes, alternatives include removable disks or cloud storage with object lock, which prevents deletion for a set period. What matters most is testing regularly that restoring from the copy actually works, because an untested backup is not reliable protection.

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