And Now For Our Annual 'Tape Is Still Not Dead' Update
The Register, Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025
Shipments of tape storage media increased again in 2024, according to HPE, IBM, and Quantum - the three companies that back the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Format.
The three companies on Tuesday claimed they shipped 176.5 Exabytes worth of tape during 2024, a 15.4 percent increase on 2023's 152.9 Exabytes.
For those of you who stopped paying attention to tape a while back and need a refresher, LTO is an open tape format co-developed by the aforementioned companies, who all produce drives that can read and write the tapes. Sony and Fujifilm make LTO tapes.
LTO tapes ship in cartridge that are always the same size. Every few years the LTO consortium announce a next-generation spec. 6th-gen LTO had 2.5TB native capacity, 7th-gen 6TB, and gen-8 hit 12TB capacity.
Since gen-7, LTO drives can read and write only the previous generation of tape.