IBM has announced its latest TS1170 tape drive with 50TB cartridges, more than 2.5 times larger than LTO-9 cartridges.

IBM, which manufactures the LTO tape drives sold by itself, HPE, and Quantum, has its own proprietary tape formats used in its TS1100 series drives and Jx format media. The latest TS1170 drive supports 50TB JF media cartridges with 150TB compressed capacity through 3:1 compression. The prior TS1160, announced in 2018, supported JE media with capacities of 20TB raw and 60TB compressed.

The TS1170 drive operates at 400MBps raw throughput and supports both 12gig SAS and 16gig FC connectivity. It is also recognized as LTFS-ready. However, JF media is not backwards-compatible with the earlier JE specification.

The new tape cartridge media, also called 3592 70F, uses Strontium Ferrite particle technol