Manufacturers behind the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) standard shipped 152.9 exabytes of data in 2023. The three main providers, HPE, IBM, and Quantum, credited this growth to rapid data generation, increased infrastructure needs, AI workloads, and the suitability of tape for offline storage and ransomware protection.
Despite its slower access and restore times compared to disk, tape is favored for its large capacity and ability to be kept offline in protecting bulk data and shielding it from ransomware. The reported 152.9 exabyte figure for tape capacity refers to compressed data, with each LTO generation having both native and compressed capacity.
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