Tape still isn’t dead, but shipments slipped by 16 exabytes in 2025
- ID
- 20580
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 02 Sep 2026, 9:34 AM
- Fetched
- 02 Sep 2026, 12:40 PM
- Provider
- The Register
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.theregister.com/storage/2026/09/02/tape-still-isnt-dead-but-shipments-slipped-by-16-exabytes-in-2025/5293813
- Source URL
- https://www.theregister.com/headlines.atom
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 02 Sep 2026, 12:41 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersdatabase_learners
What happened
LTO tape shipments fell 16 exabytes (9%) in 2025 to 160.3 EB, down from 2024's record 176.5 EB, with analyst Tom Coughlin blaming trade uncertainty for cautious purchasing. Q1 2026 shipments rebounded 57% YoY, driven partly by a new 40TB cartridge compatible with existing 30TB-capable drives.
Why it matters
Unless you operate cold-storage or archival infrastructure, this has no direct impact on what you ship. The one angle worth noting: tape's low power consumption is being pitched as a datacenter advantage as power constraints bite, which could matter for teams evaluating long-term storage costs for large AI training datasets or compliance archives.
Discussion angle
Whether cold-storage tiers like tape belong in any practical AI/ML data pipeline, or whether this is purely enterprise archival territory irrelevant to startups and indie builders.