3 ms·

That's just it, there is no need whatsoever to "stay current" unless you are unhappy with the capacity of the tapes. For multiple generations now, that has been

That's just it, there is no need whatsoever to "stay current" unless you are unhappy with the capacity of the tapes. For multiple generations now, that has been the only difference. The last major feature was slightly better compression followed by LTFS, and that came out on LTO 5 and 6… In 2010 and 2012.

Hackbraten 4y ago
If your drive breaks down while you’re trying to do a restore, you’re going to want to get a spare one quickly. That may become a problem if you choose not to stay current.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  In which case I'm going to eBay where I probably got the original drive in the first place over 10 years ago, and a quick look finds thousands of listings for both standalone and internal drives, at good prices, from reputable sellers with good history, going all the way back to LTO2 (which is almost 2 decades old!). This is what I mean, LTO sits in this niche where it is/was popular in the enterprise and so the secondhand market is big. I would be willing to wager that I will be able to find LTO 6 drives in another 10 years, with no problem.
wazoox 4y ago
There's the very interesting new feature of LTO7M and 8M, which adds 50% capacity to your LTO7/8 tapes when formatting them with a - respectively - LTO8/9 drive. A 30$, 9TB LTO7 tape is the cheapest storage you can buy.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  It's a one-way conversion, and then you're stuck with that one LTO generation; a LTO7M tape won't work anymore in a LTO7 drive.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    It's a moot point. If you are buying the whole system new then you buy M-capable drives. If you are stuck with G7 drives - then you don't format your tapes to M, even if you have 1 G7M drive. And if you value your data, ie you want to able to recover it someday then you need N+1 drives of needed generation and format anyway.

3 ms·

That's just it, there is no need whatsoever to "stay current" unless you are unhappy with the capacity of the tapes. For multiple generations now, that has been

by Karunamon 4y ago

Hackbraten 4y ago
If your drive breaks down while you’re trying to do a restore, you’re going to want to get a spare one quickly. That may become a problem if you choose not to stay current.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  In which case I'm going to eBay where I probably got the original drive in the first place over 10 years ago, and a quick look finds thousands of listings for both standalone and internal drives, at good prices, from reputable sellers with good history, going all the way back to LTO2 (which is almost 2 decades old!). This is what I mean, LTO sits in this niche where it is/was popular in the enterprise and so the secondhand market is big. I would be willing to wager that I will be able to find LTO 6 drives in another 10 years, with no problem.
wazoox 4y ago
There's the very interesting new feature of LTO7M and 8M, which adds 50% capacity to your LTO7/8 tapes when formatting them with a - respectively - LTO8/9 drive. A 30$, 9TB LTO7 tape is the cheapest storage you can buy.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  It's a one-way conversion, and then you're stuck with that one LTO generation; a LTO7M tape won't work anymore in a LTO7 drive.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    It's a moot point. If you are buying the whole system new then you buy M-capable drives. If you are stuck with G7 drives - then you don't format your tapes to M, even if you have 1 G7M drive. And if you value your data, ie you want to able to recover it someday then you need N+1 drives of needed generation and format anyway.