Sony and Fujifilm First Media Makers of LTO-7

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, announced that Fujifilm Corporation and Sony Corporation have completed interchange testing for LTO Ultrium generation 7 format.

The completion of this testing permits these companies to use the LTO-7 Ultrium format trademarks on LTO technology products.

“The industry leading magnetic tape manufacturers have once again demonstrated their commitment to the LTO Program,” said Calline Sanchez, VP, enterprise system storage, IBM. “The LTO-7 technology is the biggest announcement in capacity and performance that the LTO program has made in four generations. LTO technology continues to provide enterprises with a way to contain the massive growth of critical data at the lowest possible cost.“

The LTO Program requires that all licensees pass a series of verification testing involving rigorous data interchangeability requirements prior to using the LTO Ultrium trademarks. Testing of a manufacturer’s LTO products is performed annually to confirm (based on the test samples) that it is adhering to the LTO Ultrium format specifications. Buyers seeking Ultrium format products look for the LTO Ultrium format trademark logo on both tape drives and data cartridges when reviewing backup and archiving solutions. Announced earlier this year, LTO-7 specifications support tape cartridge storage compressed capacity of up to 15TB ^(*), more than twice that compressed capacity over the previous generation, and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 750MB/s ^(*) for over 2.7TB of storage performance an hour per drive. As with previous generations, LTO-7 generation drives will provide backward compatibility with the ability to read and write LTO-6 generation cartridges and read LTO-5 generation cartridges, helping to preserve media investments.

In addition, the LTO-7 Ultrium generation format includes partitioning functionality, introduced in LTO-5, providing file system access to data on tape, continued support for AES-256 bit encryption for securing critical data and WORM support for regulatory compliance.

^(*) Assuming a 2.5:1 compression achieved with larger compression history buffer available beginning with LTO-6 drives.