HPE Q2080AN LTO-10 Ultrium 75TB Data Cartridge 20-Pack
Overview
The HPE Q2080AN is a 20-cartridge pack of LTO-10 Ultrium data tape media rated at 75 TB native capacity per cartridge — the right consumable for enterprise backup environments where offline storage density, long-term retention, and cost-per-terabyte matter more than random-access speed. If your organization is running LTO-10 tape drives in a library or autoloader and needs to scale retention without scaling cost, this 20-pack format keeps acquisition efficient. Each cartridge delivers up to 400 MB/sec read throughput and is built around a Strontium Ferrite magnetic base designed for a 30-year archival life.
Unlike spinning disk or flash-based backup targets, tape provides a physically air-gapped, offline copy that ransomware cannot reach across a network. At 75 TB per cartridge and 20 cartridges per package, a single order of Q2080AN yields 1.5 PB of native offline storage capacity — meaningful for organizations with deep retention policies or regulatory requirements for immutable archives.
Key Features
- 75 TB Native Capacity: Each cartridge holds 75 TB uncompressed — deploy these in a 10-slot autoloader and you have 750 TB of offline capacity without touching a single drive bay. This is the defining spec for LTO-10 and the primary reason to migrate from earlier generations.
- 400 MB/sec Read Throughput: At maximum read speed, restoring 1 TB of data takes under 45 minutes per drive. In practice, throughput depends on drive condition and data compressibility, but this ceiling means tape is no longer the bottleneck in large restore scenarios.
- 30-Year Archival Life: The Strontium Ferrite base material provides a 30-year rated archival life — relevant for compliance-driven retention in healthcare, finance, and government segments where data must remain readable for decades, not years.
- 15,104 Data Tracks at 545 kb/inch Bit Density: The high track count and linear bit density are what enable 75 TB in a cartridge the same physical form factor as earlier LTO generations. You do not need new housing infrastructure — existing LTO-compatible autoloader slots and magazines accommodate these cartridges.
- 1,035m Tape Length, 12.65mm Width, 5.2-Micron Thickness: These physical parameters align with the LTO Ultrium standard. The 5.2-micron tape thickness is thinner than earlier LTO iterations, enabling more tape per reel while maintaining the same cartridge shell dimensions.
- Re-Writable and Write-Once Media Formats: The Q2080AN supports both RW (re-writable) and WORM (write-once) use cases, giving you flexibility to use the same generation of cartridge for operational backup cycles and compliance-grade immutable archives.
- 2,850 Oe Maximum Magnetic Coercivity: High coercivity means the magnetic signal is more resistant to degradation from stray fields and environmental exposure — an important characteristic for cartridges stored off-site or in varied environmental conditions.
- Non-Custom Label (NON Cust LBL): These cartridges ship with standard HPE non-custom labels, meaning they are ready for use in automated library environments with barcode readers. If your library requires custom pre-printed label sets, plan accordingly before deployment.
- 20-Cartridge Pack Format: Purchasing in 20-cartridge units reduces per-order logistics overhead and aligns with standard magazine capacities in mid-range tape libraries, simplifying inventory tracking and rotation schedules.
- Limited Lifetime Warranty: HPE covers these cartridges under a limited lifetime warranty, which reduces media replacement risk over the operational life of your tape infrastructure.
Integration and Compatibility
The Q2080AN cartridges are designed for use with HPE LTO-10 tape drives and compatible tape library systems. LTO-10 drives can also read LTO-9 cartridges and write to LTO-9 media, providing backward compatibility for environments transitioning from the previous generation. These cartridges will not function in LTO-8 or earlier drives — if your hardware predates LTO-9/LTO-10, these are not the correct media. Verify drive generation before ordering.
For environments pairing tape with network video recorders or surveillance archive workflows, LTO-10 tape provides the lowest cost-per-TB offline tier for long-duration video retention. Most enterprise backup software platforms (Veeam, Veritas NetBackup, Commvault, IBM Spectrum Protect) support LTO-10 natively through their tape library integrations — confirm your software version supports LTO-10 if you are on an older release.
The physical dimensions of 11.3 x 11.1 x 2.1 cm and weight of 0.28 kg per cartridge are standard Ultrium form factor and compatible with LTO-compliant autoloaders, robotic libraries, and manual loaders. Consult your data storage planning guide for slot count and magazine capacity alignment before purchasing in bulk.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the native capacity of each Q2080AN cartridge?
A: Each HPE Q2080AN cartridge holds 75 TB of native (uncompressed) data. Actual capacity with compression will vary depending on data type and compressibility.
Q: How many cartridges come in one package?
A: Each Q2080AN order includes 20 cartridges, providing up to 1.5 PB of total native storage capacity per package.
Q: Are these cartridges compatible with LTO-8 or LTO-9 drives?
A: No. LTO-10 cartridges require an LTO-10 compatible tape drive. LTO-9 drives cannot read or write LTO-10 media. LTO-10 drives support backward read compatibility with LTO-9 media only.
Q: What is the archival life of the Q2080AN?
A: HPE rates the Q2080AN for a 30-year archival life. This is based on the Strontium Ferrite base material used in LTO-10 media.
Q: What does 'NON Cust LBL' mean in the product name?
A: NON Cust LBL indicates these cartridges ship with standard non-custom HPE labels. They are barcode-ready for use in automated tape libraries. If your library requires custom pre-printed label sets with specific barcode sequences, you would need to order pre-labeled or custom-labeled media separately.
Q: What warranty covers the Q2080AN?
A: HPE provides a limited lifetime warranty on these cartridges.
The Q2080AN is the media I recommend when an organization needs to prove its backup strategy to an auditor — specifically because of the 30-year archival life rating on the Strontium Ferrite base. That is not a marketing number; it reflects a meaningful improvement in magnetic stability over earlier oxide-based LTO media, and it matters in healthcare and financial services environments where retention policies run 10 to 25 years. At 75 TB native per cartridge and 20 cartridges in the box, you are looking at 1.5 PB per purchase order — that changes how you think about tape procurement cycles.
Technical Highlights:
- 15,104 Data Tracks: The track density is what separates LTO-10 from LTO-9 on a capacity basis — more than double the track count of LTO-8. Same cartridge shell, 2× the tracks, 2.5× the capacity over LTO-8 at 12 TB. This is not incremental.
- 400 MB/sec Read Speed: In a dual-drive autoloader running parallel restores, you can sustain close to 800 MB/sec aggregate read throughput from a single library. That makes tape a credible restore tier even for time-sensitive DR scenarios, not just deep archive.
- 2,850 Oe Coercivity: High coercivity tape resists demagnetization from ambient field exposure during off-site transport and vault storage. If you rotate cartridges through a third-party vault service, this spec is the one that protects data integrity over the transit cycle.
Deployment Considerations:
- Confirm your tape drive firmware supports LTO-10 before deploying these. Some older LTO-10 drive units shipped with firmware that required an update to achieve full 75 TB recognition — check HPE's drive firmware release notes for your specific drive model.
- The NON Cust LBL designation means barcodes are standard HPE format. If your tape library was provisioned with a custom label scheme tied to a specific barcode range, these cartridges may not scan correctly in your library's catalog without re-labeling — verify before ordering in bulk.
The Q2080AN is a strong fit for surveillance archive environments where video retention regulations require 90-day to 7-year offline storage and the organization has already deployed an LTO-10 library tier. At 75 TB per cartridge, a single 24-slot library slot bay holds more than 1.8 PB — enough for years of high-resolution camera footage from a mid-to-large deployment without adding drives or library frames.
