[tw04]

> You probably don't want to have to need a separate device to read and a device to write.

I don’t think this would bother the average enterprise in the least. We used to have entire rooms dedicated to tape libraries that housed dozens of tape drives and thousands of tapes each.

The read and write speed are absolutely critical but having to utilize multiple devices isn’t anything new at all.

[skycrafter0]

Used to? We absolutely still do. LTO is a widely used format, and as far as I'm aware, it is "picking up more steam" each year.

[Dylan16807]

In terms of capacity, LTO sales are increasing. In terms of tape count and drive count, there's been a steady decline.

[rowanG077]

I don't think there are public numbers. No doubt IBM knows. I do expect that trend to reverse this year if true.

[Dylan16807]

https://www.lto.org/2025/07/lto-tape-technology-shipments-sc...

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/23/lto_2024_tape_shipmen...

Unless something is wrong with these numbers, it's simple enough to do rough math to get tape count and compare with historical numbers.

Claims of 5.7 or 5.8 million drives over the lifetime of the format can also be compared to older data to see a slowdown.

[tw04]

I didn’t mean to imply that tape is dead despite the 40 years of insert new technology claiming they’ve finally killed tape.

I more meant we no longer have room sized libraries unless the cloud providers have commissioned something custom and not available to the public. I believe the last installed powderhorn I’m aware of was decommissioned almost a decade ago now.

https://www.iscgroupllc.com/products/storagetek/storagetek-p...

[bastawhiz]

It doubles design, development, and manufacturing cost, potentially doubling your supply chain. It's not a problem for the consumer.