LTO stands for Linear Tape Open. Its a tape format that designed by Seagate, HP, and IBM
LTO tapes are a popular tape format, not least because they can store a huge amount of data. Currently LTO 4 tapes (the largest available) can store up to 1.6 terra bytes. Currently there are four different LTO tapes, though LTO 5 and LTO 6 are on the drawing board.
LTO-1
- Size: 100 GB (native) 200 GB (compressed)
- Media Colour: Black, except HP which produces a blue tape
- Release Date: September 2000.
- Speed: 20 Mb/s
LTO-2
- Size: 200 GB (native) 400 GB (compressed)
- Media Colour: Purple, except HP which produce a dark red tape
- Release Date: February 2003.
- Speed: 40 Mb/s
LTO-3
- Size: 400 GB (native) 800 GB (compressed)
- Media Colour: Slate-Blue or Blue-Gray, except HP which produce a yellow one.
- Release Date: November 2004
- Max Speed:80 MB/s
Note: Introduced WORM feature.
LTO-4
- Size: 800 GB (native) 1600 GB (compressed)
- Colour: Green/Teal or Blue-Green
- Release Date: May 2007
- Max Speed:120 MB/s.
Note: Now has a feature of 256-bit AES-GCM drive level encryption.
