Even as we continue to debate whether or not tape is dead, indicating at least that its salad days are probably behind it, some of the most interesting innovations in tape technology I’ve seen are happening right now.

For example, there’s Index Engines’ tape indexing and search software. If you’d been able to give backup administrators the ability to do a keyword search across dozens of backup tapes to identify what tapes should be restored, as well as the ability to extract single relevant files from said tapes, we might not have ever heard of a VTL.

I’d put the latest development from ediscovery services provider RenewData into that category as well. Renew says its tape-processing systems now only need to take a single pass through a given piece of linear media. Renew previously needed two or three passes, requiring its admins to mount tapes in proper order and reassemble data as it was ingested. The single-pass process will reduce the time it takes to find relevant information stored on its clients’ tapes.

The single-pass process is made possible by software that allows that data to be reassembled on the back end. Renew is not selling that software, except as part of the back-end of its hosted services. Renew’s VP of marketing Bob Little says the company doesn’t have any plans to offer it as an on-premise product.

But I have to wonder if someone else won’t find a way to develop something similar. I also wonder, if the tape space keeps coming up with finding new ways to access data randomly on linear media, whether this disk vs. tape debate could get much more interesting.

Ever since I started covering storage, I’ve been hearing the disk vs. tape debate, usually including proclamations that tape is dead or dying.

There are good reasons to make that assertion. Disk-based backup is catching on, particularly among SMBs, and data deduplication is evening out the cost-per-GB numbers between disk and tape for many midrange applications. Disk is preferable to tape in many ways, especially because it allows faster restore times for backup and archival data. Once again, people are starting to ask, what’s the point of using tape? Dell/EqualLogic’s Marc Farley posted a funny video on his blog to illustrate the question on Friday.

I’m not so sure we’ll ever really see the end of tape. When it comes to the high end, there’s simply too much data to keep on spinning disk. The cost of disk is often still higher per GB, depending on the type of disk and the type of application accessing it. And that doesn’t include power and cooling costs.

I’ve also heard lots of good reasons to give up tape. And maybe in certain markets, like SMBs, tape will die — if it hasn’t already. But whenever tape is on the ropes, another trend comes along to boost it back into relevance.  When disk took over backup, the data archiving trend kicked in, and tape’s savings in power and cooling and its shelf life for long-term data preservation came to the fore. Now, as data dedupe has disk systems vendors pitching their products for archive, too, along comes “green IT” to buoy tape.

Now, I’d like to ask the same questions Farley did, because I’m just as curious to know, and because he and I may have different audiences with different opinions. Do you think tape is dead? If not, what do you use it for? Let us know the amount of data you’re managing in your shop as well.