How come these were never used for data storage?

>>60597007
Pretty sure they were

>>60597007

I saw a Texas Instruments computer game from the late 70s/early 80s at a goodwill on a 8 track

File: Floppy_disk_300_dpi.jpg (528KB, 1052x1104px) Image search: [Google]

528KB, 1052x1104px

>>60597007
How come these were never used for portable music players?

Audio isn't data?

>>60597092
Haha sure showed them, nobody can fight the truth

>>60597007
They are.
But there's a BIG disadvantage

Let's say you're looking for a txt file on that drive.
You can't just plug it in and drag&drop that file.
First you'd have to find the exact spot on the tape where the file is located.
Assuming you'd store a lot of files on there, that would be very time consuming process.

>>60597007
They were used. In fact probably still exist in some corporations.
>>60597386
They are mainly used as a slow but long lasting mass back-up method. Meaning having to look for a single file wouldn't happen.

>>60597473
I know.
I got a lot of customers using them for archival backups.

>>60597386
The same thing happens when you use audio cassettes which were a really common storage medium

>>60597386
Because these were mostly used for backups.
Lookup the history of .tar

>>60597518
As far as music storage goes cassette tapes are a much better solution because of the quality of tape that is being used (Even type I is a better tape formulation than was used on 8 track IIRC). But 8 tracks are clunky, unreliable, and take up a decent amount of space for how much tape they actually hold. Another major drawback is that they cannot be rewound and only fast forwarded until it goes around in a loop and gets to the point that you want. Plus these things snap all the time at at the splice and it's kind of a hassle taping them back together.