We were excited to learn of a new development within the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies — which is made up of HP, IBM, and Quantum. They have just announced that the LTO tape roadmap has been extended through the 10th generation.

This means that the current generation 6 is just the beginning of amazing tape developments. The LTO consortium has set the new generation guidelines at 62.5 TB for LTO-9 and 120 TB for LTO-10.

According to Joel Tax of the Santa Clara Research Group, “The production of six generations of drives and a well defined term road map are key elements for the success of LTO.” In other words, tape is far from being dead. The truth is that tape will most likely play a much larger role in longterm storage.

Beyond being able to hold massive amounts of data LTO-9 and LTO-10 will feature amazing transfer rates. It has been estimated that LTO-9 will include a compressed rate of 1,770 and the LTO-10 will offer a blazing 2,750 MB/second.

“With the extension of the roadmap, organizations can expect advancements in capacity and efficiency at lower costs,” said Chris Powers of HP.

This means that for organizations looking to scale out their data storage infrastructures, tape will allow for them to cut costs and spur on much higher levels of efficiency.

Where convenience is concerned, both LTO-9 and LTO-10 will include:

- Read-and-write backwards compatibility.
- Write Once Read Many (WORM)
- Encryption and Partitioning
- Linear Tape File System (LTFS)

Each of these features makes tape easier to use and more convenient than ever.

If you’re currently on the market for LTO tape or considering it, LTO-6 offers a compressed capacity up to 6.25TB and a transfer rate of up to 400MB/S. Also, its Linear Tape File System helps make it one of the best long-term solutions on the planet.

Have questions about LTO tape? We would love to help answer them.

Also, we both buy your old LTO data tape media and sell LTO tape. Drop us an e-mail and we’ll help you get started and answer any questions you may have.

And yes, we definitely believe that LTO tape happens to be one of the best and most cost-effective longterm solutions on the market.

Congrats to the LTO consortium for this amazing news!

Contact us today if you want to sell your IT equipment or hard drives: Info@BigDataSupplyInc.com | Toll Free 800-905-7329 | Local 949-679-6633

Google is one of the largest tape users. Tape for archive is a wise choice.

There are numerous tape doubters out in the world, especially proponents of disk-only storage. However, recent reports have revealed that the use of tape is on the rise -- especially within medium to large organizations.

The perfect example of a major organization utilizing tape to assure that massive amounts of data are secure for years to come is Google. The organization understands the power of LTO and the continual improvements that are expected in the coming months and years.

For instance, according to to a recent IBM report, the brand will be making a near 40-times improvement on its current LTO-6 technology. The truth of the matter is that disk isn’t making nearly as many leaps forward as tape is making at the present moment.

Technology expert Chris Mellor suggest that tape is the very best method for longterm storage for the following reasons:

1. Tape is the only method that can keep up with the massive amounts of customer transactions, images, music, videos, and other popular forms of data being archived today.
2. It’s cost-effectiveness makes it an excellent form of storage after data stored on disk loses its importance.
3. Tape is durable and its off-line nature offers ultimate data security.

While LTO-6’s capacity is already off the charts, LTO-7 will provide 6.4 TB of raw capacity -- and the LTO consortium is already talking about LTO-8, LTO-9, and even LTO-10!

This is why Google and other leading organizations are investing heavily in LTO technologies for data backups. Google in particular has been saved by its use of tape when thousands of mail accounts have gone missing. Without offline archives via tape, there would already have been hundreds of thousands of unhappy Google customers.

Instead of technology experts suggesting that tape is near dead, they are suggesting that DAT’s future may be fading. At the rate its going, LTO will one day boast of 102TB of capacity. This capacity level would most likely be seen in around 2025.

Looking to learn more about tape? We would love to answer your questions. At Big Data Supply, we offer new and used tape, tape drives, and more.

You can also sell tape and take advantage of our recycling program.

Call or e-mail us for more information.