LTO8, LTO Ultrium 8 Data Cartridges

The LTO8 tapes have arrived and are available now in all brands in Australia!

The LTO8 tape has a capacity of up to 12TB native and up to 30TB compressed. LTO8 tape library owners can still use the the Type 'M' or M8 tape. The LTO7 "Type M" or  'M8' tape will have a capacity of up to 9TB native and up to 22.5TB compressed. The LTO 7 Type M or M8 tape will still be the best value per TB for your new LTO8 libraries and autoloaders, but the LTO8 tape itself will be the highest capacity. Both the LTO7 M8 tape and the LTO8 tape itself have the same speed for read and write. The new LTO8 stand-alone drives will be able to read and write to LTO7 tapes, the pre-formatted LTO7 Type M or M8 tapes (unless you use a Quantum stand-alone drive as they can format them with a utility) and the new LTO8 tapes. 

Please note that LTO8 drives will not be able to read or write to LTO6 tapes which is the first time ever an LTO drive cannot read back two generations! This could apply to the LTO7 tapes, LTO7 M8 tape or Type M tapes and therefore LTO9 drives will probably not read them!