One of the companies that have been approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to further research the magnetic tape storage solution, Imation, is now releasing a new LTO-type of device, the world's first magnetic tape capable of multi-terabyte storage. Besides this feature, the Ultrium Generation 5 is capable of faster transfer speeds and comes with integrated partitioning.

“Imation is pleased to be one of the first to provide customers the advantages of next-generation LTO 5 tape cartridges. Magnetic tape remains the most cost-efficient way for businesses to address storage and compliance requirements, whether for long-term data archive or regular backup of active data, given tape’s energy savings and cost-per-gigabyte advantages over other methods,” said Subodh Kulkarni, chief technology officer and senior vice president of Imation’s global commercial business.

Though this solution is used mostly for backups on large servers, the new LTO 5 tape cartridges will be able to provide companies with enhanced storage as well. Imation also states that with the help of their TeraAngstrom tech, the tape is much smoother and this will result in fewer errors while transferring data at high speeds. The data transfer speeds that can be reached while using this type of magnetic tape are of 280 MB/second for compressed formats, which is double compared to the standard transfer ratio for uncompressed data.

“With a native capacity of 1.5 terabytes and 3.0 terabytes of compressed storage, data transfer rates of up to 280 MB/second compressed, data encryption, and new partitioning functionality to enhance file control and space management, the LTO 5 format offers significant improvements over prior LTO tape generations. Customers can trust that an Imation LTO tape is of the highest quality and reliability, because Imation pioneered many of the manufacturing, servo-writing and cartridge technologies used in these tapes,” continued Mr. Kulkarni.

Server administrators will surely appreciate the integrated partitioning function that will make their lives easier when there is need for some serious storage space managing. The adding of the 3.0 terabytes of compressed storage is Imation's innovative approach with the fresh LTO 5 magnetic tape cartridges.


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