Hewlett-Packard has become the second major LTO

An announcement comes on the heels of Quantum's introduction earlier march of LTO-5 Ultrium tape drives, autoloaders and cartridges. Other tape library vendors, such as Overland Storage and Spectra Logic, have also announced LTO-5 tape products, as have all of the LTO media manufacturers, including Fujifilm, Imation, Maxell, Quantum, Sony and TDK. LTO tape cartridges have a native capacity of 1.5TB (3TB with 2:1 compression) and LTO-5 drives have a native transfer rate of up to 140MBps (280MBps in compressed mode, which translates into a backup rate of 1TB / hour). LTO-5 cartridge capacity is almost 2X the capacity of LTO-4's native 800GB. LTO-5 Specs: More Speed, Capacity LTO-5 increases the speed up to 180 Mbps and capacity to 1.6 TB in native form (not compressed). The compression ratio in LTO-5 tape format is 2:1, which is the same for all earlier versions. Compared to LTO-4 tapes, generation 5 twice over the capacity and boosts the speed by an extra 50%. In addition to dependable bumps upward in accordance to speed and capacity, each version brings in new features in itself. LTO-3 tape brought in WORM (write once, read many), encryption in LTO4, and now partitioning is being offered by LTO5 tape. With the LTO5 tape drives, HP introduced a free software tool called TapeAssure that supervise the status, performance (including backup reports), utilization and health (e.g. remaining head life) of the tape drives and media. LTO-4 and LTO-3 tape cartridges can be accessed by the HP EH957A tape drive. The drive can record and read the LTO-4 tapes, while it can only read the stored data on LTO-3 cartridges. Read/write enable LTO-4 and LTO-5 tapes are given here: D2407 (LTO4 tape - TDK), 26247007 (LTO4 - Fuji), 183906 (LTO ultrium-4 tape - Maxell), LTX800G (LTO-4 media cartridge - Sony), 229323 (LTO-5 tape - Maxell), LTX1500G (LTO5 ultrium tape - Sony), C7975A (LTO ultrium-5 tape - HP), MR-L5MQN-01 (LTO5 backup tape - Quantum), and 27672 (LTO 5 tape - Imation). Advanced interlock and smart-grabber systems employed in HP LTO5 ultrium disallow the movement of tape cartridges leader-pin within tape housing. HP LTO-5 EH957A drive is ideally designed for automatic tape libraries and improved resistance against pollutants. Longer useful life secures the investments and facilitates the businesses to satisfy the tough demands of data maintenance laws.