Upgrading to LTO-10 raises a big question: what happens to the data on your existing tapes? Because LTO-10 isn’t backward compatible, LTO-10 migration needs more planning than past upgrades, and even LTO-9 only reads one generation back. This guide and the short video above cover what you gain, when you don’t need to migrate, and the two main ways to do it.
Why LTO-10 migration is less clear-cut than past upgrades
Customers traditionally skipped a generation or two when upgrading. Up to LTO-7, drives could read tapes two generations back. Moving from LTO-5 to LTO-7, for example, gave a big jump in capacity and performance, and the new drive could still read your LTO-5 tapes.
That changed with LTO-8 and LTO-9, which read and write only one generation back. LTO-10 isn’t backward compatible at all.
| Drive | Can read |
|---|---|
| LTO-10 | LTO-10 only |
| LTO-9 | LTO-9, LTO-8 |
| LTO-8 | LTO-8, LTO-7 |
| LTO-7 | LTO-7, LTO-6, LTO-5 (read only) |
What you gain by migrating
The main gain is capacity. LTO-7, LTO-8 and LTO-9 each added 6 TB (6, 12 and 18 TB native). LTO-10 holds 30 TB native, 67% more than LTO-9, or 40 TB with the new aramid cartridge.
For a 500 TB archive, that’s roughly:
- 84 LTO-7 cartridges
- 28 LTO-9 cartridges
- 17 standard LTO-10 cartridges
Fewer cartridges means less shelf and library space, fewer tapes to track, and lower running costs. Migration saves money either by streamlining your LTO estate or by fitting more capacity into the same footprint.
First, ask: do you need to migrate it?
Before migrating everything, check whether the data still has value:
- Compliance data: has the retention period ended? If so, you may not need to keep it.
- Media and project files: is old footage still worth anything to the business?
- Everything else: what would it cost you if this data were lost?
Answering these questions saves time and money, and migration is a good opportunity to clean house.
Two ways to handle an LTO-10 migration
Restore and re-archive. The traditional method: restore data from your old tapes to primary storage, then write it to new, higher-capacity tapes. It’s slower, but checksums can verify the data along the way. It also puts the data back on primary storage, where tools, including AI, can index and analyze it, which can add real value.
Tape-to-tape copy. Data is copied from the old tape to a new, higher-capacity tape, usually through an NVMe or hard drive cache. Open formats such as LTFS make this practical. It’s generally faster and better suited to large archives.
In practice, most businesses use a mix of both.
Not migrating is a valid option too
Plenty of companies never migrate between LTO generations. Instead, they keep older drives to read their media when needed. That works well, especially in industries with finite data retention requirements.
Because LTO-10 can’t read older tapes, plan to keep a drive for each format you need to read. An LTO-9 drive reads LTO-9 and LTO-8; an LTO-8 drive reads LTO-8 and LTO-7. Symply offers drives from LTO-7 to LTO-10 in desktop, rackmount and library form factors. For rack setups, the SymplyPRO 2U Migrate holds a full-height LTO-9 drive and an LTO-10 drive in one 2U unit.
You can also wait and migrate at a later generation. See our LTO-9 and LTO-10 pages to compare.
How to decide
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The key question is which data you need to keep, whether for its business value or for compliance. Once you know that, you can choose to migrate now, keep older drives, or wait for a later generation.
Need help planning an LTO-10 migration? Email hello@gosymply.com.