this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I believe tape is still king there. LTO is working on some 500+ TB tape for the future IIRC.

[–] solrize@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The upfront cost of tape is excessive though. It wasn't always like that. And LTO-9 missed its capacity target: it's 18TB (1.5x LTO-8) instead of 24TB as planned. Who knows what will happen later in the roadmap.

[–] qupada@fedia.io 20 points 4 days ago (2 children)

They've missed a couple of times over the years.

From LTO 1 to 9, the capacities (TB) were 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.5, 2.5, 6, 12, 18. LTO 6 also rather let the side down there.

Apparently though LTO 10 is going to get things back on track? I've seen claims it will achieve 36TB, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The real problem is the environmental requirements for LTO 9 and newer have become too strict. The longevity is still (supposedly) fine, but the tapes are much more sensitive to temperature and humidity fluctuations when in use.

Brand new tapes have to be brought into the environment where they'll be written for 36-48 hours to acclimatise before being used, and then have a 60-90 minute "calibration" in the drive before they can be written to.

Honestly, it could put the use of the newer types of tapes entirely out of the reach of many.

[–] solrize@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Oh I didn't know about the new requirements. Less backwards compatibility too. IBM 3592 looks better but costs even more. Tape drives can't be that much higher tech than HDDs, so if they cranked up the volume they could likely be way more affordable.

[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago