Tape technologies
LTO
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) is an open standard that defines two formats: one for fast data access and the other for high storage capacity. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Seagate developed LTO jointly.
One of the tape industry's biggest problems has been a lack of standards, with each vendor providing its own technology. The LTO standard was devised so that different manufacturers' tapes and tape drives would interoperate.
LTO uses a linear multi-channel bi-directional format. LTO also includes timing-based servo (automates error correction), and hardware data compression.
The two formats previously mentioned are Accelis and Ultrium. Accelis uses an 8mm wide tape in a two-reel cartridge and the format reads from the mid-point of the tape to speed up data access and searches.
This is of great benefit for online searches and time-critical data retrieval. Typically the capacity of Accelis products starts at 25GB. Ultrium on the other hand is a single-reel format that aims to maximise the amount of data you can squeeze onto the tape, and is specifically designed for archival and backup purposes.
The capacity starts at 100GB with a native transfer speed of up to 15MB/s.
More information can be found at the LTO web site www.lto-technology.com.
