LTO Cartridge – Drive Compatibility Matrix Not As Deep As You Think

March 27, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A bunch of IBM i shops that must be in the process of upgrading their tape backup systems reached out to the techies that are part of the IT Jungle collective recently and expressed surprise or dismay when they thought that the LTO 9 tape drives they were looking at would be able to read tape cartridges written by LTO 7 drives or that LTO 8 drives would be able to read LTO 6 cartridges.

This, after all, has been the pattern that we have seen in the market for a long, long time. LTO 5 drives can read and …