40TB LTO-10 tapes quietly go on sale for $494 — a single tape can hold 13,000,000 songs and up to 100TB of compressed data with a 400MB/s transfer rate

Each LTO-10 cartridge natively holds 40 TB, expanding to 100 TB when compressed Fujifilm uses Barium Ferrite particles for improved magnetic stability and lifespan Uncompressed transfer speed reaches 440MB per second — higher when compressed Fujifilm has begun selling its newest LTO-10 Ultrium tape

<![CDATA[ <article> <ul><li><strong>Each LTO-10 cartridge natively holds 40 TB, expanding to 100 TB when compressed</strong></li><li><strong>Fujifilm uses Barium Ferrite particles for improved magnetic stability and lifespan</strong></li><li><strong>Uncompressed transfer speed reaches 440MB per second — higher when compressed</strong></li></ul><p>Fujifilm has begun selling its newest LTO-10 Ultrium tape cartridge, a storage format built specifically for enterprise archival and long-term backup needs.</p><p>Each cartridge holds 40TB of native capacity, expanding to as much as 100TB once standard 2.5 to 1 compression gets applied.</p><p>At that capacity, a single tape could theoretically hold roughly 13,000,000 songs, assuming an average file size of 3MB per song.</p><h2 id="massive-capacity-built-for-data-centers-and-long-term-archives">Massive capacity built for data centers and long-term archives</h2><p>Fujifilm built this cartridge using Barium Ferrite particle technology, a magnetic material chosen specifically for improved stability and extended archival lifespan.</p><p>The company rates uncompressed data transfer at 440MB per second, rising to 1,100MB per second once compression gets factored into daily performance.</p><p>That places LTO-10 well ahead of most enterprise SATA <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/10-best-internal-desktop-and-laptop-hard-disk-drives-2016">hard drives</a>, which typically max out around 250 to 290MB/s.</p><p>Fujifilm also built in AES-256 encryption that meets FIPS 197 compliance standards, a requirement common among government and financial sector storage buyers.</p><p>The cartridge carries 15,105 individual tracks across its tape surface, supporting the dense data layout needed for such massive total capacity.</p><p>The company rates the bit error rate at 1 in 10 to the 20th power, a figure the company claims is roughly 100,000x more reliable than typical enterprise SATA hard drives.</p><p>Archival life is up to 30 years under proper storage conditions, considerably longer than most spinning drives or <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/best-solid-state-drives-ssds">SSDs</a><strong> </strong>typically last.</p><h2 id="reliability-claims-and-where-this-format-fits-today">Reliability claims and where this format fits today</h2><p>This cartridge only works with LTO-10 tape drives and libraries, meaning buyers need compatible hardware already installed before adopting this specific format.</p><p>That requirement limits LTO-10 largely to <a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/best-data-center-proxies">data centers</a>, media archives, and institutions already running established tape backup infrastructure at scale.</p><p>Fujifilm claims this format is ideal for disaster recovery scenarios, where long shelf life matters more than instant retrieval speed for most files.</p><p>Unlike hard drives, magnetic tape degrades slowly when stored correctly, making it a common choice for cold storage across many industries.</p><p>The format remains rewritable, letting institutions reuse cartridges across multiple backup cycles rather than treating each tape as single-use only.</p><p>Tape storage has persisted for <a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/lto-tape-storage-is-still-going-strong-despite-elon-musks-efforts-to-wipe-it-out-and-its-now-working-on-40tb-cartridges-for-the-ai-age">decades despite predictions of its decline</a>, largely because no cheaper alternative matches its capacity per dollar.</p><p>Whether LTO-10 sees wide adoption outside specialized enterprise environments remains uncertain, given how few consumer devices support tape drives at all.</p><p>Fujifilm backs the cartridge with a limited lifetime warranty, a guarantee uncommon among comparable storage formats sold at similar price points.</p><p>This cartridge is currently selling for $494, discounted from a suggested retail price of $888.89 listed by the manufacturer.</p><p>For organizations managing petabytes of infrequently accessed data, a cartridge holding 100TB of compressed data may be worth considering.</p><p>Via <a href="https://tapeandmedia.com/fujifilm-lto-10-ultrium-tape-rw-data-cartridge-40tb-16978170/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Tape and Media</a></p><figure class="van-image-figure inline-layout" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style="max-width:676px;"><p class="vanilla-image-block" style="padding-top:31.51%;"><img id="diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78" name="tr-g_news" alt="Google logo on a black background next to text reading 'Click to follow TechRadar'" src="https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78-1920-80.jpg" mos="" align="middle" fullscreen="" width="676" height="213" attribution="" endorsement="" class="inline"></p></div></div></figure> </article> ]]>