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

Question

In A New Hope, Admiral Motti says that the Death Star plans were stored on data-tapes.

“Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data-tapes”*

I always figured this was something that would just be conveniently ignored in future installments, but Rogue One doubles down on this by making it clear that the Scarif facility is storing the Death Star plans on a data-tape.

Given that holograms, droids, datapads, and other advanced electronics exist, why does the galaxy far, far away use such as primitive technology as data-tapes at all, especially for something as important as the Death Star plans (which can be transferred to whatever un-tapelike thing the rebels hand off to Leia)?

_{* Just realized that Motti’s really rubbing salt on the wound since the stolen data-tapes were almost certainly destroyed by the Death Star’s destruction of Scarif and Vader surely knows that.}

Do we know that "tape" is not a throwback term in the way 21st-century anglophones say "telephone" to mean "pocket computer" or "camera" to mean "solid-state light sensor"? — Graham Lee, Nov 17 '17 at 14:38
@GrahamLee yes, we know. It's a different galaxy where they don't speak English, so what we hear is just the dialogue translation to English. It doesn't make any sense to translate the name of a futuristic technology from a different galaxy with a current Earth throwback term which does not even exist in our language. — motoDrizzt, Nov 17 '17 at 15:02
@motoDrizzt It makes perfect sense, if the word that's used in Star Wars is the word that was used for magnetic tapes when their technology was less advanced. — Mike Scott, Nov 17 '17 at 16:07
@GrahamLee It's connected to that trope that data is a physical object that cannot be copied. Although in this case you could also argue that InfoSec has become so good that it has eclipsed physical security - thus you can't easily download the plans. — Peter M, Nov 17 '17 at 16:07
...said the man about a universe where light "sabers" are the pinnacle of weaponry... — gowenfawr, Nov 17 '17 at 16:12
"A long, long time ago, in a galazy far, far away" people used tapes instead of better technology. A lot of older works have this trait because it's kinda hard to imagine things too far removed from what you already know and understand. — Pleiades, Nov 17 '17 at 17:11
@GrahamLee Or how, even in a digital medium, we store "documents" in "folders" and keep messages in a "mailbox", and we "cut" and "paste" when editing those documents? — KSmarts, Nov 17 '17 at 17:31
http://www.wisdompills.com/2014/05/28/the-famous-social-experiment-5-monkeys-a-ladder/ — Spencer, Nov 17 '17 at 19:17
Expounding on the 'older works' bit, Star Trek also used 'tapes' for data storage in the original series. — Austin Hemmelgarn, Nov 17 '17 at 19:24
(Out of universe) even today, tape is still in many cases a preferred and a superior backup method. I just got out of a research meeting where we were talking about processing some (recently generated) data that's stored on tapes. — NeutronStar, Nov 17 '17 at 19:53
Remember, this was a long time ago. Also, in the real world, civilizations invented things in different orders. Europeans had advanced navigation, compasses, and telescopes but not really firearms while the Chinese were masters of black powder fireworks. So hologram projection may have been developed for certain societal reasons and storage media might not have been developed as much for other societal reasons. — Todd Wilcox, Nov 17 '17 at 20:34
@motodrizzt if it's a translation then there's no guarantee that the word "tape" means a literal tape, as the translator could have picked that word as an idiom. — Graham Lee, Nov 17 '17 at 22:45
Why would you assume "tape" = magnetic tape, ir could be a solid state printed circuit tape, engraved crystal tape, or even bantha hair nanowire tape. Also keep in mind many governments purposely keeps sensitive systems on obsolete technology to make it harder to hack. The US nuclear launch system still uses floppy disks for heavens sake. — John, Nov 18 '17 at 06:31
I find your lack of faith in our storage mediums... disturbing — Machavity, Nov 18 '17 at 20:36
@KSmarts: Maybe YOU use folders, and only store documents. Those of us with more advanced (even though it was developed first) have operating systems with tree-structured directories, in which we can store files - some of which may be documents. Others might be programs, collections of data, endpoints to various devices, or whatever... Just because something is older does not mean it's primitive. Today's tape is a sophisticated, reliable, high-density storage medium. — jamesqf, Nov 19 '17 at 04:29
@Joshua Seconded. For most usage tape comes in more expensive than hard drives but it scales better. Thus if you have truly huge amounts of data tape is still the medium of choice. The Death Star plans are probably humongous. — Loren Pechtel, Nov 20 '17 at 01:04
the UK still stores its legislation on velum, partly because of tradition but also because of it's proven ability to last 1000+ years. No more modern technology can touch that level of longevity. Perhaps in the star wars universe tape has been shown to be the digital equivalent. — Joseph Rogers, Nov 20 '17 at 17:41
@gowenfawr: Not really, they aren't. They're just the traditional weapon of choice for forceusers. — tomasz, Nov 21 '17 at 15:55
@jamesqf You seem to be missing the point of KSmarts' comment, which is that we still commonly use the terminology "folder", "document", etc. even though we are talking about digital entities. (And yes, it is common to use "folder" and "directory" interchangeably, even though physical "folders" can't easily be organized into tree structures.) — Kyle Strand, Nov 21 '17 at 18:31
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of (the Millennium Falcon) full of tapes hurtling (through the void an 1.5x light speed)." Andy Tanenbaum — RonJohn, Nov 21 '17 at 23:23
@Kyle Strand: I didn't miss KSmart's point, but I think you missed mine, which is that the folder/document/desktop thing is a primitive & very limited metaphor, which should go away (or at least I hope it does) as people - or at least the people able to design DeathStars - learn to do without such a crutch. — jamesqf, Nov 22 '17 at 02:29
@jamesqf If that's what you were trying to say, then your comment has no relevance. KSmarts was clearly suggesting that, just as in our universe we use metaphors of old technology to label new technology, the people in the Star Wars universe may do the same. The fact that you think these metaphors are inadequate doesn't have any bearing on whether such metaphorical labels may be used in the Star Wars universe. (And, honestly, it's still not clear to me what, if anything, is wrong with our metaphors; they're not intended to be perfect literal descriptors!) — Kyle Strand, Nov 22 '17 at 17:00

score 139 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 16 '20 at 09:31

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Because it's the backup and backups are better on tape.

The fewer moving parts an object has, the more robust it is. Additionally, the long term degradation of electronic memory cells is a problem. So when you make a back up of something, you want it to be able to survive a long time. Tape can do this.

Technology in Star Wars has advanced enough to create a 512-million exanode capacity monomolecular-switching binary tape the size of a book. In English, that means they are using nanotechnology to encode data into the tape at the molecular level.

Remember, this is the backup, it's not the version that will be actively accessed, it doesn't need to be quick like flash memory is (that said, it is still pretty fast in real life).

And finally, it is much (much) cheaper. In real life, hard disk drives (HDDs) cost about 50% more per GB than tape, and solid state drives (SSDs), which are far more robust than HDDs, are a whopping 850% more expensive per GB than tape.

For a real world example, Google made headlines in 2011 when it was discovered that they kept long term backups on tape. So it's not a bad method of data storage at all.

In short, tape is the superior backup method because it is cheaper, has high capacity, greater reliability, and better longevity.

edited Jun 16 '20 at 09:31

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answered Nov 17 '17 at 16:49

amflare

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Especially once you account for cosmic radiation, given that they were a space faring people. – ratchet freak Nov 17 '17 at 16:57
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Would also mention cost - 15 TB tape is $80, but 10+TB hard disks are over $300 and SSD's over 15TB are like $1000. We're talking orders of magnitude more expensive. The Empire is still a bureaucracy... pencil-pushers are always gonna grab the cheaper option. – Jeutnarg Nov 17 '17 at 17:22
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Not to mention the fact that tape even in modern times has been increasing in capacity: https://newatlas.com/sony-ibm-magnetic-tape-density-record/50743/ – Daishozen Nov 17 '17 at 17:30
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I'm not sure I can agree with your statement "The less moving parts an object has, the more robust it is" as an argument for tapes over SDDs. – Mr Lister Nov 17 '17 at 18:00
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@ratchetfreak If they didn't have high quality shielding from cosmic rays, they wouldn't be a space faring civilization on the scale they apparently are. Humans are little if any tougher, relative to radiation, than electronics. The rest of this, however is excellent. – Zeiss Ikon Nov 17 '17 at 18:19
@ZeissIkon Well I would also assume some evolutionary pressure occurred where those susceptible to the consequences of radiation would be filtered out. Especially if some planets aren't volcanically active enough to have a magnetosphere. – ratchet freak Nov 17 '17 at 18:29
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@MrLister it is much easier to recover data from a mangled tape than from a mangled flash chip. – ratchet freak Nov 17 '17 at 18:32
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If one wants to reduce moving parts...a while ago they successfully burnt information into a crystal and could read it.......I dare say nothing more robust than that in RL....sad that star wars thinks of tapes as more robust there – Thomas Nov 17 '17 at 18:44
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Uh... out of universe, meaning in the real universe, tape backups are the worst. "when you make a back up of something, you want it to be able to survive a long time. Tape can do this." <- citation needed. Notice that Google keeps/kept long term backups on tape. Meaning the backups that you hope/expect you will never restore from might go to tape. Tapes actually have low capacity per single object. The only way they win on capacity is in capacity per dollar. Tape is the cheapest, in all senses of the word. It's only used at all because of cost, not any other reasons. – Todd Wilcox Nov 17 '17 at 20:29
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@MrLister The lab I worked at in the 90s and naughties used tape for mass data storage (hundreds of terabytes in an era when that was a lot). When the mechanism on a tape I used jammed they actually pulled the cartridge apart and moved the spool to another case. Took days to get the data rather than the few hours the robotic silo usually delivered because of the need for human intervention, but it was delivered intact. They also recovered data off a mechanically stretched tape for a buddy. That stuff is so simple that the data survives even fairly rough handling in a retrievable form. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Nov 18 '17 at 01:03
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@ToddWilcox I would disagree with you on that point. Magnetic tape can be highly data dense: see here. – fyrepenguin Nov 18 '17 at 02:46
Magnetic-core memory was used in the space shuttle flight computer long after newer less expensive and lower weight alternatives existed. However, the core memory was very reliable, particularly against cosmic radiation. Tapes, similarly, have a proven long lifespan in storage. – Scott Whitlock Nov 18 '17 at 21:13
Language barrier here. What kind of technology is meant by "tape"? – IS4 Nov 18 '17 at 21:45
@IllidanS4 - Magnetic tape. Called such because it is rolls of this stuff. Similar tech is seen in cassette tapes – amflare Nov 18 '17 at 23:44
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@ToddWilcox: Nobody competent, and certainly not the wildly successful technological behemoth that is Google, would deliberately choose a storage medium for backups that they deem inferior just because they "hope" they will never need to restore from them. That's complete nonsense. – Lightness Races in Orbit Nov 19 '17 at 04:06
@LightnessRacesinOrbit To be fair, tape is probably holding large, older backups that will take a while to restore from and still require newer incremental backups to be applied over top of them. In that sense, one hopes one will not need to restore from tape. – chepner Nov 19 '17 at 19:00
One thing you mention the cost difference vs storage of a SSD today vs 512 million exanodes. Presumably the cost will go way down, and the density will certainly be much higher than it is today. Samsung is already producing 64 layered chips, and I would guess within a 10-20 years it will be thousands of layers. In short, the days of star wars are too far into the future to say that tape density will exceed SSD. – cybernard Nov 20 '17 at 02:33
I saw this article today and thought of this answer – Machavity Sep 01 '18 at 20:10

score 58 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 17 '17 at 16:22

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The out-of-universe answer is that the original films were written in the 70's, and SF&F usually has some basis in truth. The idea of flash drive equivalents probably didn't even occur to Lucas while he was writing it. It was carried on in Rogue One to enforce continuity.

edited Nov 17 '17 at 16:22

amflare

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answered Nov 17 '17 at 16:18

Orgmo

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This seems like a pretty reasonable out-of-universe answer, but it seems like OP is looking for an in-universe answer. – Edlothiad Nov 17 '17 at 16:21
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It seems like it, but OP didn't explicitly say so. So this is a valid answer. – amflare Nov 17 '17 at 16:24
@amflare - to be a valid OOU answer, it should contain some evidence. Like a quote from Lucas or something. – DVK-on-Ahch-To Nov 17 '17 at 16:30
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@DVK-on-Ahch-To - No, to be a good OOU answer it should contain some evidence. – amflare Nov 17 '17 at 16:32
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Hard drive technology wasn't widely available until the mid-80's, and flash storage tech was still way off. This isn't the only case of massive tech disparity by our terms (so, them using something we'd consider basic and obsolete, while flying around in space playing holo-chess and shooting each other with blasters) in the Star Wars universe. – Orgmo Nov 17 '17 at 16:40
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Any in-universe answer is merely a rationalization. This is the true answer. – WGroleau Nov 17 '17 at 19:17
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As the OP, I was looking for an in-universe answer, but I do appreciate having an out-of-universe answer as supplementary material. I won't be accepting this, but I'm glad it's there. – Thunderforge Nov 17 '17 at 20:38
Emailing / torrenting the data on intergalactic internet did not occur to Lucas in the 70s. Today it would be ridiculous not to think the best way to get the secret out is just to put in on the like wikileaks – gman Nov 18 '17 at 13:08
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Considering the "in-universe" answer you accepted presents the same reasons for using tapes as we do in our world, I find your logic for not accepting this answer flawed. As @WGroleau says, Lucas chose tapes because they were the most futuristic data storage tech when Star Wars was conceived, not for any other reason. – Ian Kemp Nov 20 '17 at 11:17
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Yup. Tapes were advanced high-tech back in 1977. If you really need an in universe explanation, consider that its not possible that the protagonists in that far far away Galaxy actually speak American Midlands English, and in 1977 "tapes" was the closest English word for whatever their real recording media was. – T.E.D. Nov 20 '17 at 13:11
To expand on @T.E.D.'s comment, if it was made a decade later I'd be willing to bet they would have had a data disk instead. – Orgmo Nov 20 '17 at 13:17
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@amflare - I'm not sure what evidence we really need for this. Evidence that the film was released in 1977? Evidence that tapes were used for backups then? This stuff isn't common knowledge? – T.E.D. Nov 20 '17 at 13:20
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Absolutely this. 90% of scifi.SE seems to be "give me an inane in-universe reason for this thing that has a blatantly obvious out-of-universe explanation," and it's absolutely tedious. Then when you point this out, people go, "but I want an in-universe explanation!" They explicitly ask for the wrong answer and don't accept the right one. – cfh Nov 21 '17 at 11:48
@T.E.D. The assertion about Rogue One could certainly use some support. Yes, Rogue One is clearly supposed to be very tightly tied into existing continuity, but the writers still could have chosen to gloss over the exact data medium used to contain and transport the plans. – Kyle Strand Nov 22 '17 at 16:55
This answer doesn't seem to address the non-tape media used in A New Hope to transfer the plans to R2-D2, which is mentioned in the question itself. The scene is pretty clear evidence that George Lucas was able to imagine a futuristic data-storage medium that didn't exist in the 70's. (Sure, it looks a bit like a floppy disk, but only in the sense that it's roughly flat and square; plus, it's tiny.) – Kyle Strand Nov 22 '17 at 16:57
@KyleStrand - Given they were trying to tie everything back into the front of New Hope, they really had to use the same terminology. Otherwise it would be pretty jarring if you tried watching the two back-to-back. I honestly don't see why anyone would demand links to writers actually explaining this, when the accepted answer clearly got by with no such writer links (just a bunch of non-SW links about what tapes are). – T.E.D. Nov 22 '17 at 17:04
@T.E.D. Or, as I said, they could have glossed over the exact nature of the medium. According to this transcript, the word "tape" shows up in the movie exactly once. So, are you sure the writers felt it necessary to use the word for the purpose of continuity, rather than because they genuinely believe it makes some in-universe sense for tape archives to be used for archival purposes? If not, why don't you agree that supporting evidence would be helpful for establishing the rationale? – Kyle Strand Nov 22 '17 at 18:45
@KyleStrand - Supporting evidence always helps, if it exists. However, no answer under this entire question has any canon-sourced supporting evidence cited, so I don't understand why its a concern only against this one answer. – T.E.D. Nov 22 '17 at 19:16
@T.E.D. I'm not restricting my concern to this answer. I stated this concern in the comments on this answer rather than on other answers in order to answer your comment that you're "not sure what evidence we really need for this." – Kyle Strand Dec 01 '17 at 22:51

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 17 '17 at 15:09

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Tape backups have the advantages of being lighter weight and less fragile than a removable hard disk, far less expensive than Flash RAM storage (at least until the last couple years), and easily portable. Not to mention that if a high capacity tape storage format was standardized in the early days of space travel, with millions of petabytes stored that way, it might be easier to continue with that standard technology (and incremental, backward compatible capacity upgrades, like the 250 MB version of QIC-80) than to arrange to transfer every book, photograph, spreadsheet, etc. in the galaxy to a new storage format before the last "Old Republic Standard Tape System" reader became non-functional (think how hard it is to find a working 8-track player, or 9-track reel-to-reel data drive these days).

answered Nov 17 '17 at 15:09

Zeiss Ikon

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Correct, and the quickest way to transmit bulk data then was to put it on magnetic tape and bung it in the post. – Mick Nov 19 '17 at 22:29
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@Mick Still is, by several orders of magnitude. Will remain that way until networks start improving much faster than storage. You can fit a staggering amount of tapes in a van, never mind a semi. – Leliel Nov 19 '17 at 23:05
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@Leliel at least for about 23 more years – Wayne Werner Nov 20 '17 at 16:01
Given the relative cost of tape vs. flash RAM storage, on a cost-per-bandwidth basis, it's unlikely [cargo transporter] full of tapes will be outclassed until tape is such a specialty item it starts getting expensive again. I wonder what the bandwidth of a container ship loaded with backup tapes is? Sure, it's slow, but it carries hundreds of containers, each of which will hold tens of thousands of tape cartridges. – Zeiss Ikon Nov 20 '17 at 17:14
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The LTO-10 standard calls for a 45 terabyte tape cartridge. Size of a cartridge is roughly 10 x 10 x 2 centimeters. Taking into account packing, you could about 40 in a single cubic foot box. You could fit 1,120 boxes in a standard 20 foot seacan, or 44,800 cartridges. A Panamax container ship can carry 5,000 seacans (224 million cartridges, 10.08 billion terabytes). Assume 1 week between North America and Europe plus a week for loading/unloading (1,209,600 seconds), that works out to about 8300 TB/s. – Keith Morrison Nov 20 '17 at 20:30
@WayneWerner That link is actually saying that in 23 years the entire internet will have the same total bandwidth as today's fleet of Fed Ex trucks and planes all loaded with storage media. – Kyle Strand Dec 01 '17 at 05:19

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 21 '17 at 04:05

What makes you believe data tapes are primitive?

There are many form factors we can store data on. Each form factor is built around the assumptions of how it will be used. Data tapes don't fit the way we use data today, but that doesn't make them primitive.

This is the latest tape produced by IBM and Sony. Its data density is 201Gb per square inch. A blue ray disk tops out at about 12.5Gb/sq. in. Disk drives can beat this, coming in at around 1,340Gb/in, roughly 7 times the density. However, the tape can be ultra-thin and wound up:

So it's not that tape is primitive, it's that its use has fallen out of style because it does not match the way we want to use data in most of our life. Perhaps, in the future, we will change our mind, and data tapes will be a real thing again.

Thanks for the information - we don't know what 'type' of tape storage that is being referred to. That being said, crystals really are the best way to store valuable information for a long time in a small package. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3034260/data-storage/superman-memory-crystals-could-store-data-for-billions-of-years.html — Tracy Cramer, Nov 21 '17 at 17:40

score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 19 '17 at 15:59

I once read somewhere that George Lucas wanted to keep some connection to reality when the movies were made.

It's the same reason why the headphones on the Millenium Falcon have cables attached to them because wireless signals were considered too futuristic by Lucas.

Its also a lot easier to have fluent dialogs in a movie without having to explain every detail of the universe.

As for a source, I could have sworn it was on this site but I'm having trouble finding the question.

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 18 '17 at 16:27

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For surface area the square footage of a tape represents the most efficient format. No other format can store a flat surface area in such a compact volume.

A tape doesn't have to be magnetic. An advanced society could still use advanced data storage formats, but if you are limited to storing that data on a surface. Well a tape is the best approach.

answered Nov 18 '17 at 16:27

Reactgular

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Exactly. Optical film (silver halide) has a 500 year life expectancy, and could be used in the same manner as any optical disc. A 4x6 microfiche card could hold well on the order of 300GB utilizing Blu-Ray technology – Mad Myche Nov 20 '17 at 17:08
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A few years ago, there was the "Gigapixel Project" -- used 12x20 inch color film to photographically record 2+ gigapixels (each pixel worth at least 24 bits of color value data, so 6+ gigabytes uncompressed). Film can handily beat that resolution -- microfiche can record as high as 1000 lines per millimeter, which makes each 4x6 card theoretically hold 15 terabytes (uncompressed, without error correction coding). Optical tape, then, could hold petabytes per reel. – Zeiss Ikon Nov 20 '17 at 17:19
While today's hard drives routinely hold a lot more information than 1960s-era or even 1990s-era tapes, today's best tape-storage technology can hold even more. Even if tapes are limited to a single layer of recording on the surface (unlike, e.g. Blu-Ray which holds a few independent layers), the surface area of a tape is vastly larger than the surface area of a disk. – supercat Nov 20 '17 at 22:07
If you can encode DNA on your tape, or if the tape is actually just built of DNA, then you have a tremendously high information density. – Wayne Werner Dec 04 '17 at 17:05

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 20 '17 at 07:41

All old science fiction books contain what was the latest and greatest at that time. For example, in books of Stanislaw Lem, data was stored on microfilms. Who would today even think of microfilms? Maybe only when watching old James Bond movies.

Star wars was created during seventies, and then tapes were high tech. If they waited 10-20 years to create star wars movies, I am sure it would be hard disk, CDs or some kind of data cubes.

The fact that data is today backed up on tapes means nothig. Technology is advancing quite fast, and nobody knows what will replace tapes (that thing probably doesn't even have a name).

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 21 '17 at 15:37

Tapes are still being used. Okay, they may not be in use for day-to-day backups any more in your typical office, but if you have a seriously high volume of data that needs to be archived, tape is still the answer: they are still being used and they are still being developed.

See this story from just a couple of months ago where Sony and IBM have made a tape system that stores 330TB on a single cartridge, and expect capacity to continue to double every year for at least another decade.

That might even give you enough storage to hold the plans to the Death Star.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 03 '17 at 07:00

The data "tape"s in Star Wars might be actual data tapes like those of the present, but far more advanced, as others have suggested.

Or "tapes" might be a word that has changed its meaning over time, as I suggested in an answer in a thread asking about data "tapes in Star Trek.

I point out the history that explains why the control room of the Enterprise is called the "bridge" as an example of continuing to use a once accurate word to mean something different from the original meaning. Thus Star Trek and Star Wars "tapes" might not be tapes but just called tapes because tapes were originally what was used used for data storage.

Is there an explanation for the use of tapes in Star Trek?1

In addition the word "tapes" in Star Wars is translated from an alien language into English.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 27 '18 at 11:45

If you look in this video, the same data was crammed into a thin card type device which was given to Leia. So, Star Wars universe has lots of advanced technologies and different technologies are used in different situations.

First, portable storage shouldn't be that of a much requirement as data transmission speed is high. But for different scenarios, there are different types of portable storage technologies.

Adoption of a particular data storage technology depends upon:

Cost
Computer Interface
Culture/ Species/ Industry involved

Second, the data tapes you saw on Scariff was way more advanced than the one you see on Earth. According to Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide, it was Monomolecular-switching binary tape which had 512 million exanode capacity.

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

10 Answers10

Because it's the backup and backups are better on tape.

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