It's A Digital Disease!

The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/glhughes on 2025-02-11 17:39:22.

I have now purchased two pairs of LTO-5 tapes from two different sellers on Amazon that claim to be selling "new" tapes only to pop them in my drive and find the tape reporting 100s - 1000s of GB written to them.

The first set was not shrink-wrapped, had dirt inside the packaging, and no labels. This is what made me initially suspicious so I checked the media chip which reported 600 GB of writes. Immediate return.

The second set was shrink-wrapped with labels and looked brand new, but had even more writes to it than the previous set (3 TB). These are going back too.

WTF.

Where can I reliably purchase new LTO-5 tapes?