MagStor Unveils the World's First Thunderbolt 5 LTO Drive, Anticipates Late 2025 Launch

[T0@st]

MagStor, an industry leader in advanced data storage solutions, proudly announces the launch of the world's first Thunderbolt 5 LTO drive, marking a monumental step forward in data storage technology. This groundbreaking innovation continues MagStor's tradition of trailblazing advancements, following its historic introduction of the patented world's first Thunderbolt 3 LTO drive. Designed with cutting-edge Thunderbolt 5 technology, the new LTO drive offers unprecedented speed, reliability, and compatibility for professional data backup and archival needs.

"At MagStor, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of what's possible in data storage," said Tim Gerhard, VP of Product at MagStor. "After revolutionizing the market with the first-ever Thunderbolt 3 LTO drive, we're excited to raise the bar again with Thunderbolt 5, ensuring our customers have access to the most powerful and flexible storage solutions available."




The new Thunderbolt 5 LTO drive is ideal for media professionals, IT specialists, and enterprise users who demand secure, high-capacity storage for their growing data needs. With its seamless integration into macOS and Windows environments, this latest innovation promises to deliver effortless workflows for backup, recovery, and long-term data preservation.

The MagStor Thunderbolt 5 LTO drive is expected to be available by the end of 2025.

Patent Pending
Pending Intel and Apple Thunderbolt 5 Certification

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[bonehead123]

Just curious, but will a tape drive even need or be able to utilize the bandwidth of TB5 ?

Seems like a mismatch in techs to me, but I'm no expert in the field, so I may be totally overlooking something too

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Just curious, but will a tape drive even need or be able to utilize the bandwidth of TB5 ?

Seems like a mismatch in techs to me, but I'm no expert in the field, so I may be totally overlooking something too

I thought the same exact thing

 

[Wirko]

Just curious, but will a tape drive even need or be able to utilize the bandwidth of TB5 ?

Seems like a mismatch in techs to me, but I'm no expert in the field, so I may be totally overlooking something too

A single LTO-10 drive, which will supposedly start existing in 2025, will reach a transfer speed of 1000 megabytes per second (uncompressed) or something like that, depending on where you look. So TB5 can support about ten LTO-10 drives in RAID 0 (striping) configuration. We want tapes in RAID 0, don't we?

 

[Konomi]

Just curious, but will a tape drive even need or be able to utilize the bandwidth of TB5 ?

Seems like a mismatch in techs to me, but I'm no expert in the field, so I may be totally overlooking something too

LTO-9 tape caps out at 400MB/sec uncompressed according to this, however I'd imagine the point is more for ease of adoption of tape backup, given average consumers are more likely to have a Thunderbolt interface instead of SAS.

 

[LabRat 891]

Just curious, but will a tape drive even need or be able to utilize the bandwidth of TB5 ?

Seems like a mismatch in techs to me, but I'm no expert in the field, so I may be totally overlooking something too

I thought the same exact thing

A single LTO-10 drive, which will supposedly start existing in 2025, will reach a transfer speed of 1000 megabytes per second (uncompressed) or something like that, depending on where you look. So TB5 can support about ten LTO-10 drives in RAID 0 (striping) configuration. We want tapes in RAID 0, don't we?

I think we might be looking @ the wrong part of the specifications...

It's probably, a PCIe LTO controller connecting via Thunderbolt, for DMA and other low-latency accoutrements.
My guess is that the choice has little to do w/ bandwidth, and more to do w/ small-transaction IOPS and HMB/sysRAM caching.

 

[Wirko]

I think we might be looking @ the wrong part of the specifications...

It's probably, a PCIe LTO controller connecting via Thunderbolt, for DMA and other low-latency accoutrements.
My guess is that the choice has little to do w/ bandwidth, and more to do w/ small-transaction IOPS and HMB/sysRAM caching.

Or it may just be that TB is perceived as a more reliable and more professional interface than USB4.

 

[Visible Noise]

LTO-9 tape caps out at 400MB/sec uncompressed according to this, however I'd imagine the point is more for ease of adoption of tape backup, given average consumers are more likely to have a Thunderbolt interface instead of SAS.

Average consumers don’t buy $5,000 backup devices.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Does it do more than 400MB/s transfer rate? Why do you need anything more than USB 3.1 ?

 

[Konomi]

Average consumers don’t buy $5,000 backup devices.

You say that, but they'll happily pay $999 for an Apple monitor stand and overpriced scalped GPUs. However, the target is clearly at those people, not your typical enterprise sysadmin folk who have their rackmount solutions which is why Thunderbolt is going to be a more common situation.