Magnetic recording on flexible tape or rigid disks has become the dominant form of low‐cost storage for computer systems because it utilizes an inexpensive, removable, nonvolatile, read‐write media capable of supporting very high density and high‐speed operation. While solid state storage technologies may replace magnetic recording for small units or for very high performance, only beam addressable storage (BAS) has most if not all of the features required to be considered as a general alternative to magnetic recording in information processing systems. A number of difficult engineering and materials problems are identified, however, which must be solved before this alternative can be realized.