Months after Elon Musk's DOGE crusade to wipe it out, LTO tape storage is bigger than ever — a record 176.5 exabytes shipped in 2024, the fourth consecutive year of growth

Data seen by Tom’s Hardware from the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs) makes it clear that tape storage is a long way from becoming obsolete. In fact, the latest numbers from the TPCs (namely, HPE, IBM, and Quantum) suggest that tape storage shipments have broken records with their fourth consecutive year of growth. Going by the numbers, there were 176.5 exabytes of compressed LTO tape capacity shipped in 2024. Shipments were thus up 15.4% vs the prior year.

The TPEs credit this continued growth of LTO to enterprises relying on tape to fuel their implementations of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies. Tape fills a significant niche in modern storage architectures, complementing the likes of disk, flash, and cloud solutions.

Growth is also fuelled by the underlying qualities of LTO tape storage, such as cost-friendliness and longevity. “Setting a new growth record for the fourth year in a row, LTO tape technology continues to prove its longevity as a leading enterprise storage solution,” said Bruno Hald, GM of Secondary Storage, Quantum. “Organizations navigating their way through the AI/ML era need to reconfigure their storage architectures to keep up, and LTO tape technology is an essential piece of the puzzle for those seeking a cost-friendly, sustainable, and secure solution to support modern technology implementation and the resulting data growth.”

Linear Tape-Open (LTO) format roadmap currently goes up to 1,440TB per cart

LTO-10 is the latest format specification for LTO Ultrium tape drives and media. It can reportedly “provide the same blazing speed as LTO-9 with higher capacity and density (30 TB per cartridge, up to 75 TB compressed), [and] quantum-safe encryption.” Roadmaps we have seen extend to LTO-14, which offers up to a gargantuan 576TB per cartridge, which can fit up to 1,440TB compressed.

We repeat, tape isn’t dead

Any industry enjoying a 15.4% uplift over the prior year could easily be framed as one that is thriving. However, tape seems to have negative connotations, principally that of being ‘old technology’ and thus ripe for replacement with something more ‘modern.

This feeling that tried, trusted, and established equals outdated seems to have been the driving force behind the U.S. government’s DOGE triumphantly crowing that it “just saved $1M per year by converting 14,000 magnetic tapes (70-year-old technology for information storage) to permanent modern digital records,” back in April.

A community note quickly popped up to counter DOGE’s assertions, noting that “despite its age, magnetic tape is still highly favorable for long-term, static data archives.”

Cost-effectiveness measures like TCO, longevity, offline security, and high capacity all remain in the format’s favor in 2025.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.