Sony D-Eight

The 8mm backup format is a format for storing magnetic tape data used in computer systems, launched by Exabyte Corporation. It is also known as Data8, often abbreviated to D8 and writes D-Eight on some Sony brand media. The company was formed in order to take the 8 mm video format and make it suitable for data storage. They did this by building a mechanism and a reliable data format that used the common 8 mm video tape technology that was available at the time. This was the first form of helical scanning used commercially for data storage. The ribbon was made vertically and has a length of 112 meters. It was designed to withstand heat and high temperatures. It has been introduced in at CERN in 1994.