Magnetic tape was one of the first ways computers stored data, and it is still one of the most important. Its story runs from room-sized mainframes to the hyperscale cloud, and it explains why tape remains central to data archiving today.
Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1928 | Fritz Pfleumer patents magnetic tape for sound recording in Germany |
| 1951 | The UNIVAC I uses metal “UNISERVO” tape, the first tape drive for a commercial computer |
| 1952 | IBM introduces the 726 tape unit, using plastic-based magnetic tape on open reels |
| 1964 | 9-track half-inch reel tape becomes the industry standard for decades |
| 1984 | IBM 3480 introduces the enclosed tape cartridge to the data centre |
| 1980s–90s | QIC, DAT/DDS, 8mm and DLT formats bring tape to servers and smaller businesses |
| 1997–98 | HP, IBM and Seagate form the LTO consortium to create an open tape standard |
| 2000 | The first LTO-1 Ultrium drives ship, at 100GB per cartridge |
| 2005–07 | LTO-3 adds WORM; LTO-4 adds AES-256 hardware encryption |
| 2010 | LTO-5 introduces partitioning, and LTFS turns tape into a self-describing, drag-and-drop medium |
| 2015–21 | LTO-7, 8 and 9 move to Barium Ferrite media and push capacity to 18TB |
| 2025–26 | LTO-10 arrives at 30TB, followed by a 40TB cartridge, with a roadmap to LTO-14 |
From reels to cartridges
Early computer tape came on open reels that operators mounted by hand. It was cheap and could hold far more than the punched cards it replaced. For decades, the spinning reels of 9-track tape drives were the image of computing. In the 1980s, sealed cartridges such as IBM’s 3480 made tape more reliable and much easier to automate, and the first robotic tape libraries appeared.
The format wars
By the 1990s, many incompatible formats competed for the server market: QIC, DDS/DAT, Exabyte 8mm, AIT and, most successfully, DLT (Digital Linear Tape). DLT, later owned by Quantum, dominated mid-range backup. But proprietary formats meant single sources of supply and the risk of a format being abandoned.
The birth of LTO
In response, HP, IBM and Seagate formed the Linear Tape-Open consortium to create an open standard. Any licensed manufacturer could build compatible drives and media, so customers would never depend on a single vendor. The first LTO-1 “Ultrium” drives shipped in 2000.
Seagate’s tape business was later spun out as Certance, which Quantum acquired in 2005. Quantum became one of the LTO Program’s technology providers, alongside HP (now HPE) and IBM, and over time moved its own customers from DLT to LTO. LTO went on to become the dominant tape format in the world.
Why tape survived
Hard disks got cheaper, then cloud storage arrived, and many predicted the end of tape. Instead, tape found new roles:
- Archive at scale: hyperscale cloud providers use tape libraries for their deepest, cheapest storage tiers.
- Ransomware defence: offline, air-gapped copies became essential as cyber attacks began targeting online backups.
- Media and science: LTFS made tape the standard for moving and preserving huge video and research data sets.
- Sustainability: tape’s near-zero power use at rest helps organisations cut the energy footprint of their stored data.
The future
With LTO-10 now shipping and a published roadmap to LTO-14 at 365TB native per cartridge, tape’s story is far from over. Researchers continue to demonstrate much higher areal densities in the lab, so there is plenty of room for tape to grow.
Fortuna Data has been part of that story since 1994, supplying tape media, drives and libraries to UK organisations. Learn more about us, or see our current LTO tapes.