FUJIFILM Corporation will invest approximately 10 billion yen at its Kanagawa Factory, Odawara Site, to increase its production capacity for data storage magnetic tape by approximately five times. The investment will strengthen Fujifilm's stable supply system for magnetic tape in response to growing data archiving demand accompanying the spread of generative AI. This investment, to be made from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028, will be used to expand manufacturing facilities and increase personnel to strengthen the production structure.

The rapid spread of generative AI and cloud services is driving exponential growth in the volume of data generated worldwide. As a result, establishing environments in which the enormous amounts of data accumulated through AI training and inference as well as the digitalization of business activities can be stored and utilized securely and efficiently is becoming increasingly important in supporting the digital society. Magnetic tape can store large volumes of data over long periods at low cost and can also be physically isolated from networks.

MagStor, a recognized leader in tape storage solutions, today announced availability of LTO-10 40 TB media for all product lines including Thunderbolt, Desktop, Rackmount, and Tape Libraries including PetaByte Machines, enabling capacities exceeding 21.6 Petabytes of storage in a single library.

MagStor LTO-10 enhanced media details
The new 40 TB capacity for LTO-10 is made possible by a media upgrade. Whereas LTO-10 standard media supports 30 TB Native capacity (up to 75 TB compressed), the new enhanced LTO-10 media is 40 TB Native, and up to 100 TB compressed). The enhanced cartridge is made possible by improvements to the media film substrate material, allowing a thinner tape to fit in the same size cartridge to deliver the higher capacity. The enhanced LTO-10 cartridge is compatible with all current MagStor LTO-10 tape drives.

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, International Business Machines Corporation and Quantum Corporation, today announced specifications for a new generation of LTO Ultrium data cartridges with 40 TB native capacity (up to 100 TB compressed, assuming 2.5:1 compression), extending the industry's most widely adopted open tape format for long-term, cyber-resilient, and energy-efficient data preservation. At the same time, the TPCs are optimizing the technology roadmap for future LTO products to better align with customer priorities regarding reliability, affordability and efficiency for managing colossal amounts of data.

As organizations generate and retain unprecedented volumes of data to power AI, analytics, data insight, and compliance, the 40 TB LTO-10 cartridge offers enterprises and other large-capacity users superior storage density to efficiently archive greater amounts of information. This leap in capacity is made possible by innovations in the LTO-10 drive head design and a new, highly stable base film material, which together unlock the increased native media capacity of 40 TB. This new 40 TB cartridge is compatible with the same LTO-10 drive organizations are using for the 30 TB cartridge.

MagStor, a recognized leader in tape storage solutions, today announced a new line of video surveillance appliances to deliver best-in-class data storage solutions to the Video Surveillance markets.

As video surveillance data requirements explode due to increased retention times and higher resolution video, integrators and end users are struggling with ways to tame the costs. For example, a 50 camera setup at a retail location can generate nearly 500 TB of data over 12 months, forcing users to spend massive amounts on traditional spinning disk or cloud storage. MagStor's new video surveillance appliances provides relief to users seeking more reliable and lower cost storage:

MagStor, an industry leader in advanced data storage solutions, proudly announces the launch of the world's first Thunderbolt 5 LTO drive, marking a monumental step forward in data storage technology. This groundbreaking innovation continues MagStor's tradition of trailblazing advancements, following its historic introduction of the patented world's first Thunderbolt 3 LTO drive. Designed with cutting-edge Thunderbolt 5 technology, the new LTO drive offers unprecedented speed, reliability, and compatibility for professional data backup and archival needs.

"At MagStor, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of what's possible in data storage," said Tim Gerhard, VP of Product at MagStor. "After revolutionizing the market with the first-ever Thunderbolt 3 LTO drive, we're excited to raise the bar again with Thunderbolt 5, ensuring our customers have access to the most powerful and flexible storage solutions available."

UNITEX Corporation, the leader in the computer storage space for over 30 years, is pleased to announce today that its popular USB LTO tape drive will be available with LTO-9 technology in the spring of 2022. It features USB connectivity, a native storage capacity of 18 TB and compressed storage capacity at 2.5:1 of 45 TB, and a data transfer rate of up to 300 MB/second.

UNITEX Corporation has specialized in the computer storage space since it was founded in 1990. Over the years, UNITEX has developed various driver and application software, greatly increasing interoperability and making storage devices compatible across the entire spectrum of computer operating systems. This solid history and experiences make UNITEX an extremely reliable data storage solution provider.

FUJIFILM Recording Media U.S.A., Inc. is pleased to announce the launch and availability of its FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium 9 Data Cartridge (LTO-9). Fujifilm's LTO-9 complies with the ninth generation LTO Ultrium standards for magnetic tape storage media, marking a new standard of performance for backing up and archiving large volumes of data. Fujifilm's LTO-9 uses proprietary technology to offer up to 45 TB of storage capacity (18 TB for non-compressed data), a 50% increase from the previous generation of LTO tape.

Magnetic tape is increasingly recognized as an ideal storage media for long term archival of high-volume data, safely at low-cost. In addition, tape has a significantly lower environmental impact as there is no need to have it constantly powered-on during data storage, thereby reducing CO2 emissions generated during its lifecycle by 95% when compared to hard disk drives (HDDs).

Magnetic tape storage is one of the oldest technologies used for storing data. The technology was invented way back in 1928, and it is almost 100 years old. By today's standards, the technology is considered to be slow, however, it offers something that no modern HDD or SDD offers. Today, in collaboration with Fujifilm, IBM has developed a Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) magnetic layer for LTO-8 tapes that are capable of storing an amazing 580 TeraBytes of data in a single cartridge. The new technology will enable the modern world to store ever-increasing data sizes we are now counting in zettabytes. To store all of that data, one would need a high-capacity storage device to store all of the "cold data" that doesn't need real-time processing and has information of value.

That is exactly why IBM and Fujifilm have been developing the LTO-8 tape drives that are capable of 580 TB of capacity in a single cartridge. The technology can achieve that capacity thanks to the Strontium Ferrite (SrFe), which is capable of 317Gb/in2 recording density. With 1255 meters of the tape, IBM and Fujifilm have been able to achieve this density metric.

Fujifilm, a Japanese company focused on photography, imaging, printing, and biotechnology, predicts that it can build a 400 terabyte cartridge using Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) technology. Thanks to a report by Blocks&Files, who was press-briefed by Fujifilm, we have some information on the future of tape storage. Tape storage uses Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology, which is an open standard developed by IBM to ensure all tape-based storage devices use the same format, instead of proprietary magnetic formats. We are currently at the LTO-8 version of this technology, which was released in 2017. Currently, LTO-8 can hold 12 TB in a single cartridge.

Fujifilm, one of the remaining makers of tape storage, predicts that it can pack 400 TB of tape storage in the LTO-13 era. Starting from LTO-12, Fujifilm plans to deploy Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) technology, which is different from the current Barium Ferrite (BaFe). The problem with BaFe is that each new LTO generation uses smaller and smaller particles and that leads to some problems where a tape bit value can't be read, and magnetic polarities would be disturbed if particles get too small. 400 TB tape drives using LTO-13 should be in circulation around 2032/33 according to a Blocks&Files prediction. Below you can check out the table provided by Blocks&Files that shows LTO generations and their abilities.