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> This entirely defeats the purpose of shelf-stable media; if I can't buy newly manufactured drives for old tape formats then who cares if the tapes themselves
by ghostly_s 5y ago
> This entirely defeats the purpose of shelf-stable media; if I can't buy newly manufactured drives for old tape formats then who cares if the tapes themselves can sit in a box for 20 years?
Why can't you buy new drives for old tape formats? What new features are these new formats providing?
- throwaway81523 5y agoThe new formats have higher storage density than the old ones. First generation LTO (LTO-1) stored 100GB on a tape: how much would you pay for a drive like that today? Unsurprisingly, they don't make them any more. LTO drives are read-compatible with tapes from two generations earlier, so you can read LTO-1 tapes on LTO-3 drives, but LTO-3's capacity was 400GB, so no one buys those any more either. The current generation (LTO-8) has 12TB per tape, so you can see the upgrade treadmill chugging along. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Generations