Howdy everyone, Jeff Sangpiel here, Qualssar CTO. As an open format technology, LTO, linear tape open, drives and media from different manufacturers are interoperable. So, formatting guidelines are primarily managed through the LTO Ultrium formats specifications. But there's some key operational and formatting guidelines for LTO that you should know about. First of all, no pre-formatting is needed. Unlike its predecessor, LTO9, LTO10 has eliminated the need for a time-consuming pre-formatting or initialization process for new tapes. It's a major change that significantly improves operational efficiency for tape libraries and restores. And for those in the video business who have back pain because you sneezed this morning, it means you don't have to black your tapes in advance. Uh there's a tilted head design. The reason the initialization process was ditched was made possible by LTO10's new tilted head design, which allows for intelligent dynamic alignment to place the data correctly on the tape. So, how it's written on there, there's a concept called linear serpentine recording, which means things like guard bands and data bands. But like all previous LTO generations, LTO10 uses a linear serpentine recording format. The read write heads write multiple data tracks in a single pass before reversing direction and we're writing another set of tracks in the opposite direction. So the increased tracks density of LTO10 writes data on 15,14 tracks. So you carry the seven divide by how urgent that it just adds up to a big increase from LTO9's 8,960 tracks to get that higher capacity for you. Hardware compression. LTO10 drives support lossless hardware compression,
which is enabled by default. For compressible data, this can bump up a tape's capacity from 30 terabyte native on the new current tapes to as much as 75 terabytes compressed. For incompressible data, it passes through without being compressed. Now, here's the fun. Did you know that video is already compressed? It always is. And what happens when you compress compressed things? They get bigger. So for us video folks, I think we'll skip that. LTFS support. The linear tape file system or LTFS is a standard format supported by LTO10 drives. LTFS makes tapebased data as easy to access as data that's on a disc drive by allowing it to be mounted as a file system with drag and drop functionality. Having lived in the world of retrieving archives for so many years from tape, LTFS, please. or I'll start with the stories about TAR and LTO3 and and nobody wants me to go there. Operational details. There's no backward compatibility. LTO10 drives cannot read nor write LTO9 media. Yep, you heard that right. It's a very big break from previous LTO generations that supported some form of backward compatibility. This change was necessary for the architectural improvements needed to achieve those LTO10 capacity gains. So when it's time to bump up to LTO10, there can be some things to think about like repacking new libraries from old libraries might be a big t times saver because we all know that time is money. So cartridge handling standard best practices for handling tape media should be followed such as storing tapes in a cool dry place and in their protective cases. Proper handling prevents damage and preserves that data integrity. LTO tapes are one of the longest lasting media storage methods
out there. But like my parents told me, if you don't take care of your things and leave them out, they're going to get ruined. Mold is a huge factor when it comes to magnetic media. Most people don't know this. You need to make sure you keep any magnetic media safe and protected. If you do that, you can have 30 years and the lowest total cost of ownership ever for data. That's all you need to know about LTO Tech.