Fujifilm Passed 50 Million Milestone for LTO Cartridges Manufactured

FUJIFILM Recording Media U.S.A., Inc. announced that the company recently passed the 50 million milestone for the number of LTO Ultrium data cartridges manufactured since introduction. This achievement highlights Fujifilm’s leadership and success as a manufacturer of mid-range and enterprise tape media.

Fujifilm’s first LTO Ultrium data cartridge was shipped in 2000 and had a native capacity of 100 gigabytes with a transfer rate of 20 MB/sec. Today, LTO Ultrium data cartridges are capable of storing 800 gigabytes of native data with a 120 MB/sec transfer rate. With 2:1 drive compression, this capacity increases up to 1.6 terabytes of data storage with transfer rates as high as 240 MB/sec. Fujifilm’s announcement follows news made last month as the technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program marked the shipment of 100 million LTO Ultrium data cartridges.

For data storage professionals who demand a solution that is highly reliable, cost-effective and delivers high performance, Fujifilm’s tape media has been the preferred solution.

"We are pleased that our ATOMM and NANOCUBIC technologies have helped to advance the LTO Ultrium format and continue to make Fujifilm-manufactured media the media of choice," said Norio Shibata, General Manager Recording Media Products Division, FUJIFILM Corporation. "We look forward to further developing multi-terabyte generations Ultrium 5 and Ultrium 6 with our advanced technologies and expert engineering."

Prior to assuming his current role, Mr. Shibata was General Manager of the Recording Media Research Laboratories, where he led the development of the unique Fujifilm ATOMM and NANOCUBIC coating technologies.

"Fujifilm’s achievements in this category, along with the LTO Program’s recent announcement speak clearly to the success of the LTO tape storage format," said Cindy Grossman, Vice President of Tape and Archive, IBM System Storage. "Data center managers continue to use tape storage to protect data, secure sensitive information with tape encryption, and reduce energy consumption and operation costs by archiving to tape. As companies like Fujifilm keep breaking the barriers of storage capacity with their technologies, the LTO Ultrium format will only continue to grow."

Recent studies from The Clipper Group indicate that the advances in data density and cartridge capacity help keep magnetic tape as the most cost-effective form of data storage. Tape offers both the lowest cost per/GB and is remarkably energy efficient because unlike servers, the system is at rest until the data is needed, significantly reducing operational and investment costs. In addition, LTO Ultrium generation 4 technology provides tape drive level-based encryption to help secure data during transport and storage, along with write-once, read-many (WORM) storage for compliance issues.

Fujifilm invests nearly $4 million dollars every day in research and development, using its enormous library of proprietary chemistry and advanced thin-film engineering expertise to create new products and advance existing businesses as customer needs evolve.