The small, rectangular cartridge used in the IBM 3480 Magnetic Tape Subsystem was about one-fourth the size of a standard reel of 10.5-inch magnetic tape, yet it stored up to 20 percent more data -- a total of 200 million characters. The rate at which data could be stored in the cartridge's one-half-inch wide chromium dioxide tape, or retrieved from it, was the result of using 18 recording tracks and achieving a linear data recording density of about 38,000 bytes per inch -- six times the density used in previous IBM tape drives.