Are LTO Data Storage Systems Worth It?

Linear Tape Open (LTO) is a magnetic tape data storage technology developed in the late 1990s. For over two decades, it has provided a storage solution for several applications, such as long-term archives, data backup, high-capacity data transport, and offline storage. LTO technology has advanced significantly with new features added every generation, such as write-once, read-many (WORM), data encryption, and partitioning to enable a Linear Tape File System that aids in improving storage capacity, speed, data transfer rate, digital encoding methods, and compression techniques. As this technology is often compared to cloud storage, it is best that we further distinguish LTO vs. cloud storage by discussing the pros and cons of the latter. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will be able to decide which data storage system is most suitable for your application.

PROS

Storage Capacity & Costs

Compared to storage on internal hard drives, archiving on LTO is less expensive and more effective for industries dealing with large amounts of data. The LTO Data Archival has seen rapid expansion in sectors such as media, entertainment, data analytics, and science, where there is a constant flow of data throughout the operations. With the introduction of the latest generation LTO-8, one may store 12TB of uncompressed data at 360 MBPS and 30TB of uncompressed data at 750 MBPS on a single cassette for around a hundred bucks.

Durability

LTO cartridges have a lengthy lifespan with an average cycle of 30 years and provide high-end backup and recovery throughout their life cycle.

Data Mobility

Transferring large amounts of data via networks is an expensive and time-consuming procedure that can also result in data crashes/corruption in the event of a connection or interoperability failure. Furthermore, there is a risk of unwanted data access via the internet, which poses a significant threat to data confidentiality. LTO, on the other hand, provides a simple and reasonable method of physically transferring data from one location to another through tape.

Technology Upgrade

LTO technology has exhibited extraordinary growth for years, with new releases every 2 to 3 years showcasing storage capacity expansion, faster data transfer rate, and advanced data compression and encryption solutions. The LTO Program group has established a product roadmap that includes future releases up to LTO-12 that provide increased storage capacity and performance growth.

Disaster Recovery

Since backup data stored on LTO is retained offline, the data is safe from virus attacks or malware, and the entire data can be restored as needed.

CONS

Operational Costs

The operational cost of tape-based archival is relatively high, as the cost of LTO drives, which are used for digital recording to save data on magnetic tapes, ranges from $2000-$3500, with business versions costing more.

Keeping Up With Technological Advancements

LTO1 was introduced in 2000, while LTO 6 was introduced 12 years later, resulting in a new version every other year. LTO tapes are typically transferred every second generation because the writer and reader only support two or three generations of cassettes. If we record on LTO 6 and keep it on the shelf for 60 years, there will undoubtedly be no reading device accessible, and most of the data will be lost.

Accessibility

The LTO drive, which performs digital data recording on magnetic tape, can only move the tape in one direction. As a result, tapes can only support sequential access storage. Due to the limitations of linear technology, this has a negative impact on the speed of data storage and retrieval. Because of the constraints of linear technology, they insert new data or modify existing data in the intermediate, resulting in data erasure beyond the point of insertion or alteration. To avoid any erasure of existing data, one must add data to tape from the end of the previously written sector. This can result in data replication and reduce the optimal LTO tape storage space use.