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In the original series of Star Trek tapes are used for data storage. Tapes are somewhat archaic in 2015, let alone the 23rd century. They are only really of much use for archival, due to access times measured in minutes. Yet they seem to be Starfleet's main storage medium.

Are there explanations for this, both in universe and in real life? Hard drives were invented in the 1950s and were not uncommon by the mid 60s.

user
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    So we're just going to ignore the fact that tapes are still in use today – Valorum Aug 16 '15 at 18:46
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    There is an obvious answer to this question: the writers and creators of Star Trek can't predict the future. Usually what happens with future prediction is they just imagine current tech done a little better. It's hard to think of stuff that hasn't been thought of yet. – Race Bannon Aug 16 '15 at 22:24
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    @Richard: Tapes are used for warehouse-scale data storage. I'm not sure it's a great idea to try to do warehouse-scale anything in space, but Star Trek doesn't seem to worry as much about that as I would. – Kevin Aug 17 '15 at 00:24
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    Short answer: they weren't actually tapes. They were only called tapes because in the sixties that was the primary semi-permanent storage medium for computers. Why do we still call them hard drives, even though the motivation for the word "hard" has long since disappeared? Why did we still call them floppy drives after they were no longer floppy? Why is the universal symbol for saving still a floppy disk in many programs (including Visual Studio), even though we haven't used them for years? – Robert Harvey Aug 17 '15 at 02:58
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    There's Red Dwarf's explanation: people stopped using dvds and went back to tapes because they kept losing and breaking the discs – IG_42 Aug 17 '15 at 07:25
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    @RaceBannon: It's hard to think of stuff that hasn't been thought of yet. They thought of proximity-activated sliding doors (did not exist before Star Trek; today they're all over) and cell phones (compare 90s "flip phones" to TOS communicators), just off the top of my head... – Mason Wheeler Aug 17 '15 at 10:50
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    @MasonWheeler Automatic doors were invented in 1954 (see Lew Hewitt and Dee Horton). TOS communicators had nothing to do with cell phones (cell ("network") being the critical part of a cell phone). They were simply walkie-talkies with a flipping "panel". Star Trek was pretty good at picking recent technologies and hypotheses, before they became properly mainstream; they didn't really "invent" much. Even the famous Okudagrams were just an extrapolation of existing technology and older science fiction. – Luaan Aug 17 '15 at 13:08
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    "Google says it retains extra backups on tape drives" –networkworld.com They are not archaic. – Mazura Aug 17 '15 at 16:07
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    Reminds me of the Atari 2600 cartridges that everyone called tapes. – Hannover Fist Aug 17 '15 at 16:10
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    My (new) office phone has a button with an icon of a reel-to-reel tape ... for voicemail. My office mates and I have wondered how many people under a certain age would get what it meens. – GreenMatt Aug 17 '15 at 17:47
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    @Mazura All large companies that I know of use tapes. Any information that has to be retained indefinitely for the foreseeable future is written on tape, which includes emails, files, instant messages, etc. Emails and electronic communication are usually kept for liability purposes. Additionally, web companies such as Google probably keep archives like the Wayback Machine, which archives all sites and are never deleted or modified, on tape. – jfa Aug 17 '15 at 17:49
  • @Luaan The automatic doors of the 50s and 60s were operated via pressure plates on the ground, or a wall- or post-mounted push-button in some cases. Doors activated by proximity (or motion detection) are a somewhat more recent innovation. – Darrel Hoffman Aug 17 '15 at 20:02
  • @GreenMatt Someone has actually taken this issue up. Turns out, kids understand the meaning behind icons even if the tech is archaic: http://www.slideshare.net/lispardi/lets-ask-if-teenagers-understand-the-floppy-disk-and-other-icons – L0j1k Aug 17 '15 at 23:07
  • @HannoverFist: My first reaction as well. Atari 2600 ROM cartridges did in fact resemble 8-track tapes. But as someone else says, Star Trek is not really set in our universe but in an alternate one that branches off from ours sometime in the 1960s (during the events of DS9: Little Green Men or TOS: Assignment Earth). Who's to say that the slang term "tape" for any small, flat, rectangular object used for portable data storage didn't become conventional usage and persist for 200 years in that universe? – dodgethesteamroller Aug 17 '15 at 23:13
  • If time travellers performed in the XVII centurya theatre play about the XXI century, would call cellphones "mechanical doves". – Davidmh Aug 18 '15 at 12:38
  • Here is a link to a similar question: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/174395/why-does-the-star-wars-universe-use-such-a-primitive-technology-as-data-tapes/175477#175477 – M. A. Golding Dec 03 '17 at 07:04

5 Answers5

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Like most of Star Trek's technology, we never really get an explanation for how it evolved, only technobabble for how it works. However, it's important to note that we don't actually know what technology those "tapes" use. Yes, they are physical cartridge-like objects that get put into a slot to access their data.

But that description also describes flash memory cards, removable SSD hard drives, etc:

MicroSD Card Star Trek Tape

The use of a portable device for holding offline data, that is "loaded" into a computer on demand, is a pretty universal concept. This would be particularly useful if your vessel spends a lot of time at faster-than-light speeds. Cloud computing would be right out.

The "tapes" allow the Starfleet personnel to record data in one place and move it somewhere else, accessing it only when needed, which would:

  • Improve security -- all that data isn't online where it can be "hacked"
  • Reduce space usage -- the computer's storage can be used for important things, like the recipe for Earl Grey Tea
  • Allow easy information exchange

Of course, thought we do see some usage of cassettes in TNG, it's much more rare. Instead, the computer is often instructed to "load" a certain program. This could mean that the tape concept still exists, but it's now a centrally-located tape rack, which the computer can load from at random. Or, it's possible that information density has gotten so high that the need for offline storage is gone, and their hand-held devices have replaced them.

KutuluMike
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  • Tapes would be unsuitable for things like holodeck programmes. The amount of data needed would be vast, and the physical limit of how fast you can wind the tape would make it much slower than solid state storage. – user Aug 16 '15 at 20:19
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    @MoJo The fact that holodeck programs are large actually makes tapes more suitable, since tapes have considerably larger storage capacities than any other format (Sony developed a 185TB cartridge last year). That's over 10 times the storage of the largest SSD available. Seek times are irrelevant since transfer rates are the bottleneck. You could likely wind through the tape in under 2 minutes, but it'd take over 3 days to transfer that much data at 700 MBps (that's with compression). – Lèse majesté Aug 16 '15 at 20:32
  • @Lèsemajesté: I didn't know that 18TB SSD were available; I was thinking that only 1TB and possibly 2TB are available today. Are you sure about your number of 10 times the size instead of 100 times? – SylvainL Aug 16 '15 at 21:59
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    I think you're both making an unwarranted assumption that "tapes" in Star Trek are of the magnetic reel-to-reel variety in the first place. They may just call them 'tapes' for historical reasons – KutuluMike Aug 16 '15 at 22:31
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    +SylvainL http://www.geek.com/chips/samsung-develops-16tb-ssd-that-still-fits-in-a-2-5-inch-drive-bay-1631157/ – oakad Aug 17 '15 at 00:34
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    @MikeEdenfield: Indeed, just as the term "wireless" has been resurrected for mobile devices it could well be that the entangled quantum strings they use for high density data storage are called "tapes" because they resemble 23rd century measuring tapes. Also, get over it, tech moved on, surely we don't need to retcon all new wave tech into old shows? Please? – Binary Worrier Aug 17 '15 at 11:30
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    @MikeEdenfield and I bet that, in order to persist a file they've edited, they still press an icon of a floppy disk! – gbjbaanb Aug 17 '15 at 13:07
  • +1 for the excellent point about cloud computing being unsuitable for warp travel. But, with some of the current quantum computing research going on, maybe the ship's computer could have particles that are entangled with ones at Memory Alpha? – Dan Henderson Aug 17 '15 at 18:27
  • @DanHenderson Unfortunately, quantum teleportation doesn't work the way most non-physicists think it does. It doesn't actually provide any means for FTL communication, since it still requires classical communication. – Lèse majesté Aug 20 '15 at 04:26
  • @Lèse majesté ...coupled with subspace carriers, then? – Dan Henderson Aug 20 '15 at 05:39
  • @DanHenderson That would probably work, assuming it's not a vast distance like different ends of the galaxy. But for most Starfleet ships in the Alpha Qaudrant, their communications seem to be pretty much real-time. – Lèse majesté Aug 20 '15 at 05:45
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Words change their meaning over time.

For example, I guess or deduce that the original meaning of the word yet was "now", "at the present time". And from that meaning the opposite secondary meanings of "still" and "already" developed.

When I was child I thought that yet only meant already, as in "Are we there yet?".

But that doesn't seem to make sense in the song "Bendemeer's stream".

the line:

I think: "Is the nightingale singing there yet?"

probably does not mean he is wondering if the nightengale has already arrived and started singing. Instead it probably means he wonders if the nightingale is still singing there.

The storytelling logic of the song tells me that in "Bendemeer's stream" "yet" means "still", the exact opposite to "already", the meaning I am much more familiar with. And thus from that one line in a song I deduce that "yet" probably originally meant "now".

On 19th century paddlewheel steamers a wooden platform bridged the gap between the tops of the two semicircular wheelhouses and was used to command the ship from. After decades of commanding and steering paddlewheel ships from their bridges, the command platform on propeller steamships continued to be called the bridge, and so on until the 24th century starships and beyond.

The writers of TOS may have imagined that computer tapes would still be used in the era of Star Trek and so called the small transportable data storage units "tapes", but with our modern knowledge of more advanced computer data storage, we can imagine that in the alternate universe of Star Trek which branched off from ours before World War II, small transportable computer data storage units are still called "tapes" for the same reasons that the command center of a starship is still called the "bridge".

And here is a link to a similar question.

Why does the Star Wars universe use such a primitive technology as data-tapes?1

M. A. Golding
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The "tapes" we see in TOS show no sign of actually physically being tapes. They look a lot more like solid-state storage of some kind (the props look like simple rectangles of lucite or similar):

Image from memory alpha

(From Memory Alpha)

Image from Pacific201

(From pacific201.com)

enter image description here

(From leaningstewards.org)

It could easily be that at some point they had extremely high-speed, high-density tapes for much the reason we still have tapes today (durability, capacity), the term became common again, and then they got replaced by a new form of solid-state storage but the term was entrenched.

Being in the northern half of my 40s, I said the other day having heard a new band "That's pretty good, I might get the album." (ouch)

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T.J. Crowder
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    Don't forget the B side of that album :) -- BTW, have yo ever wondered if it is possible to double the capacity of Star Trek trapes by punching a hole? ;) – Hagen von Eitzen Aug 17 '15 at 10:25
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    @HagenvonEitzen: Hey, at least I didn't say "record." :-) – T.J. Crowder Aug 17 '15 at 10:27
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    Observation seeing those images: None of the "tapes" appear to be in any way labeled. I just imagine someone with a stack of these things trying to figure out whether their warp core schematics are stored on the red lucite rectangle or the yellow one... And if there's more than one of the same color, all bets are off. Somebody in the future needs to invent the Sharpie... – Darrel Hoffman Aug 17 '15 at 14:02
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    @DarrelHoffman: :-) Yeah, I remember thinking that more than once as a boy. The Memory Alpha page shows a picture of Nurse Chapel with "food cards" which look like they might be labelled in some way, but most of the time we saw these things, they were completely free of any identifying info. :-) – T.J. Crowder Aug 17 '15 at 14:19
  • I still get criticized by my fiance sometimes for talking about going to a movie theater as "seeing a show", and I'm only 33! – Dan Henderson Aug 17 '15 at 18:34
  • Of course, the use of "album" to refer to a single LP is itself an anomaly - the origin of the term is a physical book of 78 RPM records which could each only hold one or two songs. – Random832 Aug 18 '15 at 06:34
  • @Random832: And you could argue it's no more dated today than it was in 1980, since I'm referring to a specific set of songs released in a group. :-) "Record," on the other hand (which I nearly used a couple of months back) I really can't defend. – T.J. Crowder Aug 18 '15 at 08:12
  • The squares of plastic make me wonder if they are perhaps a type of millipede memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millipede_memory). – IronEagle Nov 06 '20 at 19:50
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Magnetic tape has the longest average shelf life (10~20 years) of any existing and still in use storage medium. It also offers the highest sequential read/write speeds of any type of storage and can perform reading and writing simultaneously. IMO the burden of proof lies on you, why wouldn't we still be using tapes?

Magnetic tape data storage –Wiki (Richard's link)

Viability: (edited for brevity; missing some citations)

At any single moment in time each T10000C tape drive can read or write (or both read and write) to one tape cartridge which can contain up to 5TB of uncompressed data. Real-world sequential data transfer speeds are high (sustained 240MB/second for the T10000C and 160MB/second for the TS1130) compared to disk.

The smallest SL8500 library holds up to 1,448 tape cartridges, for 1.4 Petabytes of online uncompressed storage. An equivalent amount of PC-class hard disk storage would be priced at $100,000 or less for the drives. The tape library would likely deliver a higher sustained sequential write speed, the media would be more rugged (for off-site storage), the media would meet or exceed long-term archival storage requirements (for reliable retrieval decades into the future), and the data center power and cooling requirements would be considerably lower. The economics of this comparison are more complicated than a single-spindle versus tape drive comparison.

Data storage lifespans –storagecraft.com

Magnetic data and cassette tapes: 10-20 years
Nintendo Cartridge: up to 10 years
Floppy Disk: 10-20 years
CDs and DVDs: 5-10 unrecorded 2-5 recorded
Blu-Ray: Not certain, probably over 2-5 recorded
M-Disc: 1,000 years (theoretically)
Hard Disk: 3-5 years
Flash Storage: Depends on write cycles, 5-10 years or more

If we conservatively assume that all of the Enterprise's sensor data is collected at 1GB per second, that's ~31 petabytes per standard year. For that we'd need about 50 million (650MB) CD-ROMs (or ~6M BRDs) compared to ~21 SL8500's (~30k tapes) and remember, that's the smallest one we have today.

Mazura
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    I don't know where Floppy Disk lifetime was stimated. I remember I was not even able to have floppy disks last more than 1-2 month after that I had to re-write them. –  Aug 17 '15 at 18:37
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    @DarioOO I still own an Apple IIe and some of the disks still work 30+ years later, but most of them don't. – Mazura Aug 17 '15 at 18:41
  • If you constantly write to a cassette tape, I doubt it will last 20 years... – Yakk Aug 17 '15 at 20:48
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    @Yakk Re-writing isn't really my concern. It's about archivability. – Mazura Aug 17 '15 at 20:53
  • @Mazura Then what is up with the Flash Storage data point? It talks about write cycles: the practical write cycle count of flash storage makes tapes look positively fragile. Or are you saying something else? Unpowered storage? – Yakk Aug 17 '15 at 21:15
  • @Yakk It was an easy place to grab some numbers. Bear in mind it was written by a "marketing content specialist at StorageCraft". I don't think flash storage has existed long enough to know the "or more" part. – Mazura Aug 17 '15 at 21:22
  • I have CDs that are well over 25 years old. They work. – Oldcat Aug 17 '15 at 22:19
  • @Oldcat I'd bet money those are pressed. Replication is an entirely different process from duplication. – Mazura Aug 17 '15 at 22:32
  • Printed cds should never expire unless left in UV light. The foil is physically printed with the information. – Stephen Aug 18 '15 at 03:07
  • @Yakk: They're definitely not talking about unpowered storage, which wouldn't be much more than a year. They are likely referring to the fact that the more previous write cycles the drive has had, the shorter the drive's lifespan even with powered storage. – Lèse majesté Aug 20 '15 at 04:43
  • @Stephen Pressed CDs do not record data on the reflective layer. The data is recorded in bumps in the polycarbonate. The reflective layer itself is only protected by a thin lacquer layer and printed label. The reflective layer itself is easily contaminated during manufacturing or afterwards, which means all CDs will eventually suffer disc rot from the, typically aluminum, reflective layer becoming corroded from exposure to water or other contaminants. – Lèse majesté Aug 20 '15 at 04:52
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Actually they used tape as in motion picture film. The writers/props people come up with a lot of new tech, but in other cases they just punted and used what was prevalant for the day.

enter image description here

Valorum
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