LTO-8 capacity is double of LTO-7 and provides a 20 percent increase in performance. The added performance translates to fewer tape drives to do the same amount of work, while the additional capacity equates to fewer tape cartridges used to store the same amount of data.

LTO-8 offers a compressed storage capacity of 30TB (12TB native) using a 2.5: 1 ratio and a compressed transfer rate of 750MB / sec. (360 MB / sec. Native). Additionally, the new LTO-8 drives are backward compatible with LTO-7 tape media, allowing users to read / write any LTO-7 media. LTO-8 tape, like LTO-7, supports LTFS, WORM (Write Once Read Many), and AES 256-bit hardware encryption.