The Ultrium format is based on the best existing technologies. Open standards allow for increased innovation and provide customers with more choices in terms of performance, capacity, and form factor. For the first time since the introduction of the LTO format, the LTO-8 specification is only backward compatible with one generation. The new LTO-8 drive cannot read or write LTO-6 BaFe and LTO-6 MP media. However, the LTO-8 drive can initialize new LTO-7 media, allowing them to become LTO-8 Type M media, which can store an increased data capacity from 6 TB to 9 TB natively and from 15 TB to 22.5 TB. The generation (Ultrium 8) has a capacity of up to 30 TB (compressed) and a transfer rate of up to 900 MB/s.