Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is IBM’s recently released, self describing tape file system that enables tape media to be mounted and read by the operating system when the cartridge is inserted into the tape drive. The goal is to try to make interacting with a tape drive as simple as interacting with a USB stick or external hard disk. The driver is available for Linux and Macintosh with a Windows version coming soon. LTFS requires LTO 5 tape drives and media.

One of the advances made when LTO 5 was released was the ability to partition media; it includes a partition 0 and a partition 1. Partition 0 can be quickly read and is an ideal location to house the directory structure information that LTFS needs to present the contents of the tape media, which is written on partition 1. The result is that a user or administrator can have a view into the media that they can interact with without having to wait for the entire tape cartridge to be scanned. Then a simple copy command can be used to move data between tape and local disk.

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