https://vo.rs/tags/lto-tape/Latest from the Lto-Tape desk at vo.rs.Hugo -- gohugo.ioenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:10:00 +0000https://vo.rs/story/cold-storage-at-home-is-lto-tape-worth-it-in-2026/<p>Every couple of years I talk myself into pricing up an LTO tape drive, stare at the number, and put the spreadsheet away again. Tape has a mystique in homelab circles — it is what &ldquo;real&rdquo; data centres use, it is genuinely air-gapped, and a cartridge on a shelf will still read in thirty years. Then you look at what a drive costs and the romance meets reality. This is my periodic re-examination, done in early 2026 with current LTO-9 and freshly-launched LTO-10 numbers, of the only question that matters: at what point does tape actually make sense for a home archive, and are you past it?</p>Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:10:00 +0000