AI data boom fuels tape storage resurgence

The LTO Program, whose technology providers include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, and Quantum Corp., reported that the industry shipped 160.3 exabytes of compressed tape capacity in 2025, a 9% decline from 176.5 exabytes in 2024, but tape capacity shipments surged 57% year-over-year in Q1 2026, driven by AI data growth and archival demand. Quantum CEO Hugues Meyrath said tape is increasingly viewed as a strategic component of modern data infrastructure due to predictable economics and resilient long-term retention.

The combination of low operating costs, high capacity, and offline protection makes tape storage well suited to the massive storage requirements of AI workloads https://www.networkworld.com/article/4151356/network-and-storage-patterns-for-ai-workloads-the-overlooked-bottleneck.html . Companies behind the Linear Tape-Open LTO https://www.lto.org/ storage standard say the industry shipped 160.3 exabytes of compressed tape capacity in 2025, making it the second-largest year on record despite a 9% decline from the 176.5 exabytes shipped in 2024. More significantly, tape capacity shipments surged 57% year-over-year during the first quarter of 2026. The LTO Program’s technology provider companies include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, and Quantum Corp. The group says the resurgence reflects the enormous amounts of data being generated by AI systems, along with continued demand for conventional archival storage and offline backups. “We are seeing unprecedented data growth combined with increasing cost, energy, and cyber resilience pressures across the industry,” said Hugues Meyrath https://www.quantum.com/en/company/quantum-leadership/ , CEO of Quantum, in a statement https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260901165232/en/LTO-Capacity-Shipments-Grow-57-YOY-in-Q1-2026-as-AI-and-Archive-Demand-Accelerates . “As organizations adapt to this new reality, tape is increasingly viewed as a strategic component of modern data infrastructure, delivering predictable economics and resilient long-term data retention at scale.” Tape’s resurgence can be traced to the AI revolution https://www.networkworld.com/article/4209834/is-your-networking-built-for-ais-traffic-patterns-and-data-volumes.html , which has significantly increased the amount of data organizations need to retain. Training datasets, model checkpoints, research data, and other AI-related information can consume enormous amounts of storage. The most popular form of data backup is the traditional mechanical hard drive, which has the capacity and affordability that SSDs don’t have. But the data sets are so enormous that they have outgrown hard-drive-based backup—and tape can deliver the capacity needed. Compressed tapes can hold from 30TB to 250TB of data, and that’s on one tape. In a large tape library, a carousel can hold dozens or even hundreds of tape cartridges, loaded and unloaded by a robotic arm. Another advantage of tape-based backup is power consumption. Tapes don’t have to be powered while sitting idle in storage, so power consumption is considerably lower than for hard-drive-based backup. In addition, tape backup enables what is called an “air gap,” where there is no physical connection to the tape while it’s in storage. The tape sits in a storage unit, physically disconnected from the drive. That’s one security method that no hacker can get around.