How time flies when you’re having fun! Customers worldwide have enjoyed the data-saving attributes of LTO tape technology since the first generation was made available in 2000. In this LTO BlogBytes article, we will review LTO technology milestones along this enduring data protection timeline and examine a few LTO advertisements highlighting the tape technology legacy.
DEFINING LTO TAPE
Linear Tape Open (LTO), also known as the LTO Ultrium format, is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format that is optimized for high capacity, maximum storage density and performance. It securely protects offline information from natural causes and cyber threats. If online data is compromised, the offline LTO data tape can be used to restore it.
Then, as now, as this early LTO advertisement for LTO-1 illustrates, “You Can Always Use Good Backup”!
Over 517,958 billion GB of LTO tape media capacity have been shipped, and it all started with LTO-1 tape, which could store up to 100 GBs of native capacity. We are currently at LTO Generation 9, capable of storing up to 18 TBs of uncompressed data, over 180 times the capacity of the original LTO-1 tape.
The data cartridge has not changed its physical size over the last quarter century, but the tape inside the cartridge has gone through some extraordinary developments. These include the length and thickness of the tape, the magnetic material, and the number of tracks and encoding, all designed to store more data and enhance data integrity.
LTO TAPE FEATURES
Throughout the generations, additional feature benefits have been introduced.
WORM (Write Once Read Many) tape provided protection from accidental or intentional erasure.
Hardware based data encryption capability was added to protect data from unwarranted access.
To make tape easier to use, the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) was introduced. LTFS uses the LTO tape partitioning feature to store an index to the data to easily view and access tape files. With the operating system’s graphical file manager and directory tree, utilizing LTFS data on an LTO tape cartridge is easy like dragging and dropping a file from a USB flash drive.
The answer to the historic question in the LTO-4 advertisement below is evident: LTO technology is the better way to secure your data long term.
USERS PROMOTE TAPE
The best advocates of LTO technology are the LTO users themselves!
In a recent BlogBytes article, Stephen Richards, team leader for the data handling system at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, (ECMWF), stated “[our data archive has] grown probably on average over … the last 10 or even 20 years around 30 or 40 percent per annum.”
ECMWF has more than an Exabyte of data stored across 60,000 data tapes and 10 tape libraries using LTO tape technology that includes a mix of LTO-8 and LTO-9 tape. And how busy is this astonishing tape environment? According to Richards “… we probably peak closer to a thousand mounts an hour out of the (tape) libraries…results in keeping 400 tape drives busy. We sort of use the tape archive as if it’s disk.” You can view more LTO case studies here.
Having critical information backed-up is an essential data protection practice against unforeseen disasters as portrayed in the LTO-5 advertisement below.
Cyber threats, and in particular ransomware, are ever-present and can be the biggest boulders to crush your organizations data. As explained in a recent LTO BlogBytes article, “These bad actors use a variety of weapons to employ their ransomware attacks which are continually evolving. The use of deceptive [phishing] emails that trick recipients into clicking on malicious links or opening infected attachments remains a primary method for distributing ransomware.”
The ransomware menace, depicted in the most recent LTO-9 advertisement below, must not be able to get to your data. Keep your information out of reach with the offline data protection of LTO technology.
In conclusion, LTO tape technology has grown and matured to become a data security mainstay of businesses in industries around the globe to securely protect and make valuable information available. And with a record amount of LTO capacity being shipped in 2023, it’s true to say that more data is being stored on tape than ever before. So if you are one of the many businesses and organizations that trust LTO to protect your critical data, thank you for being an LTO technology user and here’s to the next quarter century of successful tape innovation.
Happy 25th Anniversary
LTO Technology.
