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Introduction to LTO Linear Tape Open Technology
The main tape formats in the current tape market include LTO, DDS/DAT, DLT, and AIT. Among them, LTO is the mainstream tape format. This article will mainly introduce the LTO tape format.
2025-01-18
The main tape formats in the current tape market include LTO, DDS/DAT, DLT, and AIT. Among them, LTO is the mainstream tape format. This article will mainly introduce the LTO tape format.
LTO stands for Linear Tape Open, known in Chinese as 线性磁带开放. This tape data storage technology was jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Seagate in 1997, becoming an open format tape storage standard in the late 1990s. After more than a decade of development, from the launch of LTO-1 in 2000 to the official release of the latest LTO-6 at the end of last year, LTO technology has continuously improved and evolved.
"Open format" means that users can access multiple sources of storage media products that are mutually compatible. The LTO standard format technology is called Ultrium. Initially, each LTO-1 tape cartridge could store 100GB of data, and now each LTO-6 tape cartridge can hold 2.5TB of data.
Over more than ten years, the technological advancements of LTO have involved several factors, including the production materials of the tape, the digital encoding and compression methods used, the physical movement speed of the tape in the drive, the length of tape in each cartridge, and the physical data density on the tape, among others.
Let's take a look at the evolution history of LTO tapes:
LTO-1:
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Launched and sold in September 2000.
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Initial capacity was 100GB.
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Initial data transfer speed was 20MB/s (maximum).
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Tape encoding was RLL 1,7.
LTO-2:
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Approved in February 2003, first products released in March 2003.
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Capacity doubled to 200GB.
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Data transfer speed increased to 40MB/s (maximum).
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Tape encoding changed to PRML.
LTO-3:
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Approved in November 2004.
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Capacity doubled to 400GB.
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Data transfer speed increased to 80MB/s (maximum).
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Introduced WORM functionality.
LTO-4:
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Approved in April 2007, first products released in May 2007.
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Capacity doubled again to 800GB.
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Data transfer speed increased to 120MB/s (maximum).
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Introduced drive-level 256-bit AES-GCM encryption.
LTO-5:
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Specification released on January 19, 2010. First LTO-5 drives launched in the second quarter of 2010.
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Capacity nearly doubled to 1.5TB (1500GB).
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Data transfer speed increased to 140MB/s (maximum).
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Introduced partitioning feature, allowing the tape to be "split" into two independent write areas. This feature supports LTFS (Linear Tape File System).
LTO-6:
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Specification released on June 11, 2012.
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Capacity increased to 2.5TB.
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Data compression rate improved due to the use of a larger compression cache.
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Data transfer speed increased to 160MB/s (maximum).
LTO-7:
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Capacity planned to increase to 6.4TB.
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Planned data transfer speed increase to 315MB/s (maximum).
LTO-8 (under development):
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Capacity planned to increase to 12.8TB.
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Planned data transfer speed increase to 472MB/s (maximum).
Although tape solutions have been rapidly replaced by disk backup solutions in recent years, the cost-effectiveness and portability of tape still make it an ideal choice for offsite storage. Even with the growing popularity of cloud platforms, tape remains an important solution for long-term data preservation.
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Introduction to LTO Linear Tape Open Technology
The main tape formats in the current tape market include LTO, DDS/DAT, DLT, and AIT. Among them, LTO is the mainstream tape format. This article will mainly introduce the LTO tape format.
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