1. Describe the ‘Magnetic tape drives’.

Include advantages and disadvantages of ‘Magnetic

tape drives’.

- Strip of plastic coated in a magnetic iron oxide layer.

- Read and written by a read/write head, read in serial access.
- Magnetised areas are 1-values and demagnetised are 0-values.
- Can store a lot of data.
- Often used in batch processing, industrial and university computers where data access
speed does not need to be fast
- Advantages: cheaper, robust, huge storage
- Disadvantages: slow, can only be read in the order which it is written