Banana Label

Definitions

1. The curved paper or plastic identification label affixed to a removable disk pack, so named for its shape. On large multi-pack installations the banana label was the only practical way to tell one twenty-kilogram platter stack from another, and mislabelling one was a memorable way to destroy a day's work by mounting the wrong volume. The term survives as a small artifact of an era when storage was a physical object that had to be carried, and when the authoritative record of what a disk contained was handwriting on its side.