The 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 tha

The 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