Starting with LTO-8, changes were made to LTO’s backwards compatibility. Previously, LTO drives could read tapes from two generations back and write to tapes from the previous generation. For instance, an LTO-7 drive could read LTO-7, LTO-6, and LTO-5 tapes, as well as write to LTO-7 and LTO-6 tapes. However, this two-generation backward reading compatibility ceased with LTO-8. An LTO-8 drive can read and write only LTO-8 and LTO-7 tapes, without compatibility for reading LTO-6 tapes. Similarly, an LTO-9 drive can read and write LTO-9 and LTO-8 tapes but cannot read LTO-7 tapes.
LTO-10 will be released in the summer of 2025, and backwards compatibility will be a thing of the past, moving forwards. LTO-10 drives will only read and write LTO-10 tapes.
- LTO drive generations 1-7 are able to read tapes from two generations prior and are able to write to tapes from the prior generation.
- LTO-8 drives can read and write to LTO-7 and LTO-8 media, including LTO-7 Type M.
- LTO-9 drives can read and write to LTO-8 and LTO-9 media only.
- LTO-10 drives (announced summer-2025) can read and write only LTO-10 media, ending backwards compatibility.
In the table’s below, we summarise the situation.
| LTO Drive Generation | Can Read | Can Write |
| LTO-1 | LTO-1 | LTO-1 |
| LTO-2 | LTO-2,1 | LTO-2,1 |
| LTO-3 | LTO-3,2,1 | LTO-3,2 |
| LTO-4 | LTO-4,3,2 | LTO-4,3 |
| LTO-5 | LTO-5,4,3 | LTO-5,4 |
| LTO-6 | LTO-6,5,4 | LTO-6,5 |
| LTO-7 | LTO-7,6,5 | LTO-7,6 |
| LTO-8 | LTO-8,7 (including LTO-7 Type M) | LTO-8,7 (including LTO-7 Type M) |
| LTO-9 | LTO-9,8 | LTO-9,8 |
| LTO-10 | LTO-10 | LTO-10 |
Archiware’s P5 software is unique in supporting all LTO tape generations and hardware vendors devices, using its own internal drivers. There’s no dependency on third party software. P5 Backup provides disaster-recovery backup to LTO and P5 Archive provides long-term cold storage for your data on LTO. Click those links to learn more. All files that are archived with P5 Archive can also later migrate from any to any LTO generation using the P5 Archive DLM add-on.
Chart below compares the latest LTO-10 to previous generations.
