During a disaster-recovery exercise, a systems administrator loads the organization's most recent full backup-stored on an LTO-5 cartridge-into the only tape drive available at the alternate site, an LTO-8 model. The backup software immediately reports that the media is incompatible and the restore cannot proceed. Which characteristic of tape technology MOST likely explains the failure?
The cartridge was written in WORM mode, and generation-8 drives refuse to load read-only media.
The LTO-8 drive is only backward-compatible with media from the immediately preceding generation, so it cannot read an LTO-5 cartridge.
Early LTO media uses a different magnetic coating that can damage newer drive heads, so the drive blocks it for safety reasons.
LTO-5 cartridges rely on LTFS partitions that generation-8 hardware cannot mount.
Ultrium tape drives have strict generation compatibility rules. A drive can read and write tapes of its own generation and read/write one generation back; drives from generations 3 through 7 can also read (but not write) two generations back. Generation 8 hardware therefore supports LTO-8 and LTO-7 cartridges but cannot read media that is three generations older such as LTO-5. LTFS formatting, magnetic coating differences, and WORM mode do not prevent an otherwise compatible drive from mounting a tape, so they would not cause the immediate incompatibility message seen in the scenario.
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What is LTO, and how do its generations differ?
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What makes a tape drive backward-compatible, and why are there limits?
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What is the difference between LTFS and WORM, and how do they relate to LTO tapes?