LTO9, LTO Ultrium 9 Data Cartridges

LTO9 tapes, LTO ULtrium 9 data cartridges or LTO Ultrium format Gen 9 has been announced but will not be available until September 2021. The LTO9 cartridge will have up to 18TB of native capacity at a speed of up to 400MB/sec and up to 45TB of compressed capacity with a speed up to 1,000MB/sec. This is triple the LTO7 tape native capacity (6TB), double the LTO7 M8 tape native capacity (9TB) and 1.5 times the LTO8 tape native capacity (12TB).

LTO-9 drives and tapes includes features, such as multi-layer security support via hardware-based encryption, WORM (Write Once, Read Many) tape option and support for Linear Tape File System (LTFS). LTO9 tape drives and are fully read and write compatible with LTO-8 and LTO-9 data cartridges.

For LTO-9, the LTO Consortium elected to balance cost, performance and capacity by offering an 18 TB native tape cartridge to address the current market for storage demand. A new LTO roadmap has been established with the goal to double capacity in each generation moving forward as with past LTO Generation releases.