Spectra Logic Certified LTO-8 Type M Media and LTO-8 Drives

Spectra Logic Corp. certified LTO-8 Type M media along with LTO-8 drives and all supported media are available for order.

An industry first offering, LTO-8 Type M media provides a 50% increase in capacity from six to 9TB using LTO-7 media.

Customers who normally wait for the latest generation of LTO tape to be cost effective before upgrading can immediately realise cost savings by simply adding LTO-8 drives and firm’s certified LTO-8 Type M media to a the company’s library.

Once an LTO-7 cartridge has been converted to LTO-8 Type M media, it can store up to 22.5TB ^(*) of compressed data per cartridge, providing users with additional capacity at a price point comparable to LTO-7 media. For data-intensive industries such as media and entertainment, video surveillance, scientific research, healthcare, financial and government organisations, LTO tape technology continues to be the lowest cost per gigabyte storage technology.

Both LTO-8 drives and LTO-8 Type M media are expected to ship in November. LTO-8 drives are compatible with LTO-8 media at 12TB capacity, LTO-8 Type M media at 9TB capacity and LTO-7 media at 6TB capacity. The company’s entire tape library family – from the T50e tape Library for small businesses to the TFinity ExaScale tape library for large enterprises – is tested and compatible with LTO-8 drives and media.

“Capitalising on this unprecedented industry offering, Spectra further demonstrates our dedication to customers who rely on tape technology as the most affordable, reliable and simple way to digitally preserve data forever,” said Nathan Thompson, CEO, Spectra Logic. “The ability to increase capacity of LTO-7 media by 50% with a simple drive upgrade reduces new media ^{acquisition costs and will likely drive LTO-8 adoption faster than any previous generation of LTO technology.“}

^(*) assumes 2.5:1 compression ratio