ISO/IEC 22050:2002 specifies the physical and magnetic characteristics of magnetic tape cartridges, using magnetic tape 12,65 mm wide so as to provide physical interchange of such cartridges between drives. It also specifies the quality of the recorded signals, the recording method and the recorded format, thereby allowing data interchange between drives by means of such cartridges.
The linearly recorded format, called Ultrium-1, has 384 tracks. It uses a timing based servo for improved track following. The format supports variable length Logical Records, high speed search, and the use of a registered algorithm for data compression.
ISO/IEC 22050:2002 specifies four types of cartridges depending on the length of tape contained in the case. These four types are referred to as Type A, Type B, Type C and Type D; their nominal uncompressed capacity is 100 Gbytes, 50 Gbytes, 30 Gbytes and 10 Gbytes, respectively.
Together with a standard for volume and file structure this document provides for full data interchange between data processing systems.