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 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.
