- High-capacity LTO-10 drives offer 30 TB of built-in storage for Apple Mac Mini setups
- Offline tape storage adds security benefits through air holes and built-in encryption
- Desktop LTO-10 drive provides SSD-like transfer speeds for long-term archiving tasks
If you have serious storage needs, you’ll be interested to know that it’s possible to attach a 30TB LTO-10 tape drive to an Apple Mac Mini, which could be a useful, but rather expensive, solution for your long-term backups.
The SymplyPRO XTF SAS LTO-10 Desktop Tape Drive supports native transfer speeds close to what a standard SATA SSD can achieve.
LTO-10 cartridges offer 30 TB of built-in capacity and a stated read and write speed of 400 MB/s. The figure rises to up to 75TB if you use compression (2.5:1) with a potential transfer rate of 900MB/s to 1000MB/s, although it all depends on how lightly the data is compressed.
LTO-10 only
The SymplyPRO XTF SAS LTO-10 full-height small chassis can be purchased from B&H for $11,395.25. Connection to a Mac Mini or any newer macOS system is possible through a compatible Thunderbolt to SAS setup.
The drive includes two 12Gb/s SFF8644 ports and comes with the cable required for that link. It also comes with a data cartridge, cleaning cartridge, worldwide power cables and Symply’s LTFS software so buyers can start writing to tape right away.
The device supports WORM cartridges and 256 bit encryption, which helps if the goal is secure long-term storage rather than short-term access.
Because LTO cartridges can be stored offline, they are often used to create an air gap that keeps backups away from remote attacks.
When combined with encryption, this approach adds another practical layer of protection should a cartridge unfortunately end up being lost or misplaced.
LTO-10 is the latest generation of the tape format, and the drive is not compatible with LTO-9 media, so existing libraries cannot be reused.
However, it will be compatible with the new enterprise LTO-10 40TB native cartridges (up to 100TB compressed) announced by the LTO program last month.
30TB LTO-10 tapes cost about $300 each, compared to the LTO-9 generation, which will set you back about $100 (18TB native/45TB compressed).
Still, the ability to connect a high-capacity desktop tape system to a compact Apple machine could appeal to archivists, production teams, or users who need cold storage without running dedicated rack hardware.
Of course, tape is not designed to replace regular SSDs, but its capacity, low failure rates and long durability are attractive for storing bulk data that does not need to be accessed very often.
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