LTO Tape Storage is designed to damage itself – no airfilters, always powered on

I commented on this video three years ago while working on LTO library diagnostics. Comment is still up. As far I can recall the issue here is the drive sled not the actual drive, it’s malfunctioning and needs to be replaced. This is not by design and is usually covered under warranty. Normally it only blasts at 100% during boot. I’ve worked with hundreds if not thousands of these.

Apr 28, 2018 LTO tape storage technology is very poorly designed, typically there are no air filters on the tape drives, and there is an air circulation system that constantly sucks dust directly through the tape drive mechanism.

But the drive system is sensitive to dust, and the solution is that you have to clean it with tape cleaning media. But even so the cleaning media is itself mildly abrasive and slowly wears down the drive heads until they no longer work.

... Here’s an idea, how about designing tape drives that turn themselves off, or go into an ultra low power idle state when they’re not doing anything, and don’t need cooling?

Or maybe design tape drive systems to have a HEPA micron particulate filter on the front of them to protect a stand-alone tape drive or robotic tape library from dust?

Yet oddly it seems absolutely no LTO manufacturer does this. It’s as if they are intentionally designing their products to slowly destroy themselves, due to environmental concerns that may be out of control of the equipment owner.

Actually LTO tape drives (and tapes) are really tolerant to dust. Several of my customers have LTO changers in rooms where there was wall work and painting done, with tons of thick dust. The drives still work. Actually one of the changer failed, but that's the changer arm, not the drives.