What is LTFS? (and TDO)

LTFS (Linear Tape File System) is a standard method of writing data to LTO, allowing transfer of content from one tape system to another. LTFS started with the introduction of LTO5 in 2010/2011 and many archive organizations offer it. Uniquely, each media maintains a record of all content on the small index partition and the data is written to the much larger data partition. TDO (Tape Disk Object) is a proprietary format developed by QStar Technologies. It is designed for tape library infrastructures. The metadata for the whole data set (many media) is written to disk and periodically also to tape using a single data partition, which significantly improves read performance. Simply put, LTFS works best with stand-alone tape drives, TDO works best with tape libraries.