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> LTO is cool and all but is the "compressed capacity" number really something to repeat with a straight face?

No, but it's been the standard in the tape industry for decades. Probably dates back to the first tape controllers that had builtin compression (so compression didn't tax the main cpu).

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I am trying to find something what would be make compression done by the tape controller favorable. Maybe it somehow makes the recovery more fault tolerant in the long run? Because it knows about the intricacies of the medium. Just guessing, I know nothing about tape storage

My first LTO drive installation was on a multi user SGI CAD application server. This system did all the compute and data management for roughly 30 users. I/O streaming was easy and efficient.

IRIX allowed for live file system backups and the drive doing compression meant all that happening with negligible user performance impact.

Was literally set it and forget it, aside from tape rotation into off site storage.

Compression would have had an impact.

We don't do multi user app serving much today, so maybe a smart drive has less benefit. But it mattered then. 2000's era.

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