On May 28th, it was reported that while cassette tapes for music have largely faded away, LTO tapes for storage purposes continue to be widely used, especially in data center cold storage. They remain a top choice, with a significant market size, and key players include IBM, HPE, and Quantum.
According to the latest annual report, the global shipment capacity of LTO storage tape in 2023 reached 152.9 exabytes, which is equivalent to 152,900,000 terabytes, showing a growth of 3.14% compared to 2022.
Prior to 2017, the shipment volume of LTO storage tape had been steadily increasing significantly. After experiencing a few years of turbulence, it began to revive in 2021.
The report attributes the growth in tape storage over the past two years mainly to the demand for AI storage, driven by "the rapid growth in data generation and infrastructure expansion in large-scale data centers and large enterprises."
As early as the 1990s, there were views suggesting that magnetic tape storage was on its last legs. However, it continues to thrive due to its irreplaceable advantages such as massive capacity, ease of offline storage, high security, and longevity of up to 30 years. It is particularly suitable for data that does not require frequent access, such as archives and backups.
The downside is its slow performance, with only a few tens of terabytes being transferred per hour.
