In the 1950's and 1960's the magnetic tape was widely spread as a common [?]. A magnetic tape has a with which information can be stored on the tape. He's composed of a conductible core and an with several . A changes the orientation of the pigments which is how information can be stored on the tape. The magnetic tape's big advantage was that it could save amounts of data on relative small . The information are typically stored in blocks of byte. The bits of a byte are stored on several tracks, whereby the last track serves for . If there are an number of ones in the column a is put there. To correct incorrect bits, a horizontal parity bit and a test mark are added to the of each track. But the magnetic tape had a big disadvantage. It had a reading procedure which needs a high . That meant that the data could only very slowly been read. This is called a access to data. Because of this modern data storage devices have a advantage over magnetic tapes. They also have a higher and function without the unpractical access. But magnetic tapes are still used because of their high . Up to GB can be saved per tape. The capacity are mainly dependant of the of the tape, the of the written tracks and the recording density. Another advantage that that they still have, is the high where they can keep up with modern devices. But because of the access they have other problems. Although data can written on magnetic tapes times, the data can only be written on the of the tape. Other criteria of data storage devices are durability and to external influences. Although magnetic tapes are impervious to and collisions, they are vulnerable to , , temperature and most importantly [?] which could harm the tape. But under good storage conditions and few [?] a viability of years is guaranteed without losing any quality. Another important point are costs. Compared to modern devices there is advantage. But the costs for the tape drives high. If there are huge amounts of data to save magnetic tapes are a good choice because of their low costs per bit compared to CD's/DVD's. Future developments are to improve the [?]. The [?] mainly depends on the consistency of the magnetic layer. That's why they seek to improve viability of the magnetic layer and the overall of magnetic tapes