It was originally developed in the late 1990s as an open standards alternative to the proprietary magnetic tape formats available at the time.

[4] Cartridges contain hundreds of meters of half-inch (12.65 mm) wide tape media wound onto a single reel.

The original version of LTO Ultrium, called LTO-1, was released in 2000 and stored 100 GB of data in a cartridge; throughout newer generations, the capacity has increased while maintaining the same physical size.

Sony followed this success with their own now-discontinued 8 mm data format, Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT).

By the late 1990s, Quantum's DLT and Sony's AIT were the leading options for high-capacity tape storage for PC servers and UNIX systems.

Seeing an opportunity, IBM, HP and Seagate formed the LTO Consortium,[5] which introduced a more open format focusing on the same mid-range market segment.

The set of 8, 16, or 32 tracks are read or written in a single, one-way, end-to-end pass that is called a "wrap".

The back and forth pattern, working from the edges into the middle, conceptually resembles a coiled serpent and is known as linear serpentine recording.

Since LTFS is an open standard, LTFS-formatted tapes are usable by a wide variety of computing systems.

This separate verify operation doubles the number of end-to-end passes for each scheduled backup, and reduces the tape life by half.

Subsequent generations of LTO have introduced new technologies, including WORM, encryption, and partitioning features.

This is useful for legal record keeping, and for protection from accidental or intentional erasure, for example from ransomware, or simply human error.

The metadata, which uses a standard XML schema, is readable by any LTFS-aware system and can be modified separately from the data it describes.

[citation needed] In spite of these disadvantages, there are several use cases where LTFS-formatted tape is superior to disk and other data storage technologies.

Throughout the history of the format, there have been six compliance-verified, licensed manufacturers of LTO technology media: EMTEC, Imation, Fujifilm, Maxell, TDK, and Sony.

[72] The colors of LTO Ultrium cartridge shells are mostly consistent, though not formally standardized; HP is the notable exception.

Sometimes similar, rather than identical, colors are used by different manufacturers (slate-blue and blue-gray; green, teal, and blue-green; dark red and burgundy).

[80] This memory can be read or written, one block at a time, via a non-contacting passive 13.56 MHz RF interface.

This memory is used to identify tapes, to help drives discriminate between different generations of the technology, and to store tape-use information.

One such reader, Veritape, connects by USB to a PC and integrates with analytical software to evaluate the quality of tapes.

[82] This device is also rebranded as the Spectra MLM Reader[83] and the Maxell LTO Cartridge Memory Analyzer.

[85] The LTO cartridge label in tape library applications commonly uses the bar code symbology of USS-39.

LTO drives have an internal tape head cleaning brush that is activated when a cartridge is inserted.

These drives are frequently packaged into external desktop enclosures or carriers that fit into a robotic tape library.

In the course of its existence, LTO has succeeded in completely displacing all other low-end/mid-range tape technologies such as AIT, DLT, DAT/DDS, and VXA.

And after the exit of Oracle StorageTek T10000 of the high-end market,[95] only the IBM 3592 series and LTO are still under active development.

LTO also competes against hard disk drives (HDDs), and its continuous improvement has prevented the predicted "death of tape".

The LTO organization publishes annual media shipments measured in both units and compressed capacity.

Disk generally has much lower initial costs, much better access times, and is better suited to normal everyday usage.

Since most tapes in a library sit passively in their storage slot, the system uses relatively little power per TB stored.