PC Gamer usually writes about super-fast storage to get your games up and running as quickly as possible. Here we talk about fast SSDs that can reduce boot times to the point where you don't even care. In fact, if you're looking for blazing speed, here's a list of our favorite SSDs (opens in new tab). If you are more of a slow and steady strategy, the good news is that tape storage is making a comeback and sales of old-fashioned media are on the rise.

You are absolutely right to wonder if anyone will be using tape storage in 2023. Most of us running PCs for general use are certainly not interested in this archaic format.

However, with HDD sales declining year over year and the rise of LTO (Linear Tape Open), there are uses for this old, cheap, but much slower technology.

After examining Trendfocus data, Tom's Hardware (opens in new tab) found that LTO storage sales in 2022 will be up 14% YoY. A whopping 79.3 exabytes of tape storage will be sold. Of course, HHDs are still far ahead, probably selling by the zettabyte, but shipments in 2022 are down 34%. Tape drive sales are projected to continue to grow. For those of us who still consider tape a defunct medium, this statistic is somewhat shocking.

So who is buying this old format storage? Last year, tape storage was the focus of ransomware protection. This year, it turns out that most of them are being purchased and used by cloud data centers. They are using LTO storage for older archives that rarely need to be accessed; LTO may be very slow by today's standards, but it is one of the cheapest options when it comes to significant data sizes.

It also has a longer shelf life than some storage media, making it ideal for archiving. Furthermore, they can store a significant amount of data per unit, especially when compared to HDDs. As an added bonus, my nostalgia allows me to imagine what a room full of these babies must have smelled like.

For most individuals, LTO storage solutions don't make much sense; unless you have a horrendous amount of data that you don't want to access for 30 years or so and don't mind the time it takes to read and write sequentially, it's hard to see a use. But for archival uses, LTOs will continue to exist, although LTOs will never be on our desks.