Whereas unit shipments of laborious drives virtually halved in 2022 and capability of HDDs additionally dropped year-over-year, gross sales of LTO (Linear Tape Open) tapes elevated as soon as once more final yr, based on Trendfocus information cited by Blocks & Recordsdata and Storage Newletter. Actually, analysts from Trendfocus consider that shipments of tapes used to retailer archives and for chilly storage will continue to grow at the least by way of 2027.
Analysts consider that aggregated capability of all tape drives shipped in 2022 totaled 79.3 exabytes, up 14% year-over-year (YoY). Trendfocus forecasts that capability of tape drives will continue to grow within the coming years with a compound annual development charge of 21%. In 2027, aggregated capability of LTO tapes will whole 207.1EB.
LTO tapes from firms like IBM, HPE, and Quantum are utilized by varied operators of cloud datacenters to retailer archives which can be barely ever accessed. In the meantime, because the quantity of knowledge that must be saved continues to extend yearly, demand for LTO tapes is rising and can preserve rising for the foreseeable future.
In relation to capability prices, LTO tapes are the most affordable method to retailer information. For instance, the newest LTO-8 tape cartridges with a Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) magnetic layer allow tapes to retailer as much as 580TB of knowledge — virtually 30 occasions as a lot as the best capability HDDs. After all, they’re significantly slower than laborious drives as a result of increased latency, since tapes can solely learn or write sequentially, however for archives and backups this expertise is sweet sufficient.
Whereas shipments of LTO tape cartridges elevated in 2022, unit gross sales of laborious drives declined once more not solely within the client house, but additionally within the datacenter house, one thing that has by no means occurred earlier than, based on Trendfocus. Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital shipped 35.2–36.4 million HDDs final yr, down round 40% YoY. Exabyte shipments of nearline HDDs declined to 165EB–170EB in This fall 2022, down round 30% year-over-year because of the slowing economic system and stock corrections.
2023 is shaping as much as be a tough yr within the storage sector, each for SSDs and HDDs. However do not be shocked if, come subsequent yr, we as soon as once more see development within the LTO tape storage phase.