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Tape drives are usually used for backing up data. You would need some backup software and would tell the software to back up whatever data you select to the tape or tapes. You can get multiple tape drives that host multiple tapes so can backup large amounts of data.<br />
The good thing about tapes is you can take them off site in case of fire etc and nowdays they can hold a lot of data as mentioned. The write speeds would not be enough to load programs on them . Disks are for data usage as they are a lot more resilient and tapes fail...a lot!<br />
Hope that helps<br />

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Tape drives are usually used for backing up data. You would need some backup software and would tell the software to back up whatever data you select to the tape or tapes. You can get multiple tape drives that host multiple tapes so can backup large amounts of data.
The good thing about tapes is you can take them off site in case of fire etc and nowdays they can hold a lot of data as mentioned. The write speeds would not be enough to load programs on them . Disks are for data usage as they are a lot more resilient and tapes fail...a lot!
Hope that helps


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Ref this link and should be very useful.<br />
<a href="http://internet.ziffdavisenterprise.com/hpstorageroom/techbriefs/HPTB1_v4.pdf" rel="ugc">http://internet.ziffdavisenterprise.com/hpstorageroom/techbriefs/HPTB1_v4.pdf</a>
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Ref this link and should be very useful.
http://internet.ziffdavisenterprise.com/hpstorageroom/techbriefs/HPTB1_v4.pdf [http://internet.ziffdavisenterprise.com/hpstorageroom/techbriefs/HPTB1_v4.pdf]

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what are tape drives used for?<br />
do they require software to be used? <br />
Can you install programs on them
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what are tape drives used for?
do they require software to be used? 
Can you install programs on them

what are tape drives used for?

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. In addition to local storage devices like CD and DVD readers, hard drives and flash drives, solid state drives can hold enormous amounts of data in a very small device. Cloud services and other new forms of remote storage also add to the capacity of devices and their ability to access more data without building additional data storage into a device.

Storage

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.