HPE StoreEver LTO-9 Ultrium 45000 External Tape Drive

BC042A is the external, half-height HPE StoreEver LTO-9 Ultrium 45000 tape drive, HPE's ninth generation of LTO. A cartridge holds 18TB native and 45TB compressed at 2.5:1, which is 50% more than the previous generation. Sustained native transfer is 300 MB/s, with a burst rate of 1,200 MB/s on 12 Gb/s SAS and data-rate matching between 100 and 300 MB/s native.

The drive reads and writes LTO-9 and LTO-8 cartridges. It supports LTFS and AES 256-bit hardware encryption, and its WORM option uses the 45TB WORM cartridge Q2079W; the rewritable cartridge is Q2079A.

The interface is 12 Gb/s dual-port SAS with an external mini-SAS HD SFF8644 connector. The box holds the drive, one HPE LTO-9 Ultrium 45TB RW data cartridge, a mini-SAS HD SFF8644 to SFF8644 cable and documentation, and HPE lists BC042A#ABA for US-English localization. HPE also lists the 2.0 m external Mini-SAS HD 4x to Mini-SAS HD 4x cable 716197-B21 for LTO-9 external drives.

HPE's timings for LTO-9 are 17 seconds average load, 28 seconds average unload, 123 seconds rewind from end of tape, with 1,024 MB of buffer. The unit draws 17 W idle and 33 W typical from 100-240 VAC at 0.8 A maximum, and HPE rates MTBF at 250,000 hours at 100% duty cycle.

The internal LTO-9 drives are BC040A and the TAA-compliant BC041A; the previous-generation external drive is BC023A.

More HPE tape: HPE tape drives and libraries and HPE StoreEver MSL LTO-9 Ultrium 45000 SAS drive upgrade kit R6Q75A.