LTO (Linear Tape-Open)

As its name suggests, it is an open format magnetic tape backup technique. It was developed in the late 2000s by HP, IBM and Seagate.

Starting with LTO-3, the standard provides an additional feature for rewriting data, called WORM.

Since LTO-4 was released, the standard also allows data encryption and encryption key management.

Since LTO-5 was released, the LTFS partitioning functionality is available.

The LTO format has evolved over the years. Since 2000, more than eight different LTO formats were released. In order to read the content of LTO tapes, you need a drive which matches for the format of the tape.

Different LTO générations :

• LTO-1: 2000, native capacity 100 Go, rate 20 Mo/s
• LTO-2: 2002, native capacity 200 Go, rate 40 Mo/s
• LTO-3: 2004, native capacity 400 Go, rate 80 Mo/s
• LTO-4: 2006, native capacity 800 Go, rate 120 Mo/s
• LTO-5: 2010, native capacity 1,5 To, rate 140 Mo/s
• LTO-6: 2012, native capacity 2,5 To, rate 160 Mo/s
• LTO-7: 2015, native capacity 6,4 To, rate 300 Mo/s 1,2
• LTO-8: 2018, native capacity 12 To, rate 360 Mo/s