Here’s the cheapest way to store a huge 1000TB of data online

(Image credit: Fujifilm)

Remember when tape was en vogue, back in the days before it was displaced by compact discs and then vanished from the consumer market? Well, turns out it's still very much in fashion in the corporate world, where demand for data storage is fast outstripping supply.

Fujifilm has announced it will offer its tape-based Object Archive solution as a service (you could call it TaaS) for a transparent, one-off fee. You can store up to one Petabyte (that’s one million GB) in a datacenter for up to five years for a mere $46,100.

That’s $0.77 cents per TB per month, without the additional egress costs, and there’s even an S3 API for Amazon’s popular cloud storage service.

Compared to Backblaze, one of the cheapest online cloud backup services around, Fujifilm’s offering is about 85% cheaper over five years.

Data is stored in the newly developed OTF (Open Tape Format) on two copies, in a way that mimics RAID-0; 180 LTO-8 and 350 LTO-7 tapes are provided. For added security, the archived data is also air-gapped. 

“The customer can request the latest LTO generation (ie. LTO-9) upon renewal of their subscription. The customer is required to upgrade to the latest tape drive technology (LTO-9 drives if the customer is requesting LTO-9 media) prior to the shipment of media,” Fujifilm told TechRadar Pro.

A shorter 3-year subscription is also available for $35,940, which is slightly more expensive in the long run at $1 per TB per month.

Just bear in mind, this is a cold storage solution, similar to Amazon’s Glacier, and as such is unlikely to suit scenarios where data needs to be moved to and from the storage tier on a regular basis.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

Read more
Someone's finger holding down a DVD disk in an external DVD player
Blu-ray is dying so I believe it's now time for 'obsolete' tape to shine again in the strangest of ironies
fibre optic cables
Forget about Blu-ray, Fluo-ray discs may well be the future of optical data storage with 10TB capacities for $1
The best free DVD rippers
About 25,000 Blu-ray movies exist; here’s how I could store an entire collection of these shiny coasters in a small suitcase
unlimited cloud storage
Best unlimited cloud storage deals in 2025
IBM FlashSystem C200
'Writing is on the wall for spinning rust': IBM joins Pure Storage in claiming disk drives will go the way of the dodo in enterprises
Seagate Exos 28TB Factory Recertified HDD
Hundreds of the world's largest hard disk drive have mysteriously gone on sale online as refurbished model - should you buy them?
Latest in Pro
A person holding out their hand with a digital AI symbol.
How AI can help the UK’s scale-ups realize the growth agenda
An American flag flying outside the US Capitol building against a blue sky
Sean Plankey selected as CISA director by President Trump
A young man working on laptop in office writing notes
Ending the fix/break cycle of End User Computing support
OpenAI
OpenAI wants to help your business build its next generation of AI agents
Ai tech, businessman show virtual graphic Global Internet connect Chatgpt Chat with AI, Artificial Intelligence.
Nation-state threats are targeting UK AI research
A hand reaching out to touch a futuristic rendering of an AI processor.
Business investors are positive about AI’s impact on the economy
Latest in News
Vision Pro Metallica
Apple Vision Pro goes off to never never land with Metallica concert footage
Mufasa is joined by another lion, a monkey and a bird in this promotional image
Mufasa: The Lion King prowls onto Disney+ as it finally gets a streaming release date
An American flag flying outside the US Capitol building against a blue sky
Sean Plankey selected as CISA director by President Trump
An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 on a table with its retail packaging
Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU spotted in Acer gaming PC, suggesting rumors of imminent launch are correct – and that it’ll run with only 8GB of video RAM
Indiana Jones talking to a friend in a university setting with a jaunty smile on his face
New leak claims Indiana Jones and the Great Circle PS5 release will come in April
A close up of the limited edition vinyl turntable wrist watch from AndoAndoAndo
This limited-edition timepiece turns the iconic Technics SL-1200 turntable into a watch, and I want one