(Photo: Fujifilm) According to IBM, by the time we reach 2025 the world will be creating 175 zettabytes of data. That's 175 trillion gigabytes, and we need a cost-effective way of storing it all. The solution? A new prototype magnetic tape that breaks the recording density world record. Mark Lantz, Manager of Advanced Tape Technologies at IBM Research, explains how researchers at IBM and Fujifilm brought together more than 15 years of work to set a new world record in tape storage. What they achieved is an areal density of 317Gbpsi (gigabits per square inch), which translates to a single tape capable of storing 580 terabytes of data.