IBM is set to release the System Storage TS1060 in November, an LTO Ultrium 6 tape drive that combines IBM tape reliability and performance.

IBM TS1060 is an IBM LTO Ultrium 6 Tape Drive designed for the heavy demands of backup and archive tape storage. The system is designed to be installed in an IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library to offer capacity and performance for the midrange open systems environment. This model incorporates the new IBM Ultrium 6 tape drive with enhanced maximum tape drive throughput over the LTO generation 5 tape drive (Ultrium5). It has a native data transfer of up to 160 MB/sec, as compared to LTO Ultrium 5 at 140 MB/sec native.

The TS1060 tape drive supports the LTO Generation 6 media specification of an over double compressed capacity of up to 6.25TB with 2.5 to 1 compression (up to 2.5TB native capacity) compared to previous LTO-5 compressed capacity of up to 3.0TB with 2:1 compression (up to 1.5 TB native capacity) per tape cartridge. Ultrium 6 tape drives can read and write LTO Ultrium 5 cartridges and read LTO Ultrium 4 cartridges.

The TS1060 has an 8 Gbps FC dual-ported interface for connection to open system servers.

It also supports data encryption with Ultrium 6 or Ultrium 5 media.

Sony is currently the only company being officially involved in LTO-6 as it signed a license contract last January 2012 for the new format with the LTO consortium. Fuji, TDK and Maxell are anticipated to follow.