LTO is the largest volume magnetic tape. Magnetic tape is mostly used in cold storage archive and backup applications because of the latency in bringing tapes to tape drives in order to read them.

IBM last week bolstered its tape storage portfolio with new media, encryption and data retention capabilities, as well as a new virtual tape library that makes backing up data a more efficient affair.

The imminent arrival of the new LTO-7 tape format, details of which were released in September, is proof that tape has yet to breathe its last, despite multiple reports to the contrary. The LTO-7 ...