No. WORM cartridges and S3 Object Lock are enforced by your media and your bucket, not by archive software. Hiberden writes standard LTFS and sets no locks.
That is a design position rather than a gap, and the rest of this page explains what each of those controls actually proves so you can decide whether you need one.
What is WORM tape?
WORM stands for write once, read many. A WORM cartridge is manufactured so the drive itself refuses to overwrite or erase what has already been written to it. The enforcement lives in the cartridge and the drive firmware. Any software writing to that cartridge inherits the behaviour without asking for it, and no software can talk the drive out of it.
What is S3 Object Lock?
Object Lock is a setting on an S3 bucket. Once it is enabled, you can hold an object under a retain-until date or a legal hold, and the bucket refuses delete and overwrite calls for that object until the hold lifts. Compliance mode blocks even the account root. Like WORM tape, the enforcement lives in the storage, not in whatever wrote to it.
Does Hiberden set either of these?
No. Hiberden writes tape as standard LTFS to standard media, and it writes cloud copies as ordinary objects into the bucket you point it at. It sets no lock parameters, no retain-until dates, and no legal holds, and it does not read a lock's state back. The retention field on a project is a label you write for yourself. Nothing in the product expires, reaps, or deletes on it.
What changes if you turn Object Lock on yourself?
Writing and verifying are unaffected, because both are ordinary put and get calls. Deleting is what changes. The minimal S3 policy Hiberden asks for includes s3:DeleteObject, which the app uses when you delete a copy or an archive. With a lock in force the bucket will refuse that call until the retention expires. That is the lock doing its job. Plan for it, because the delete will fail rather than silently succeed.
Is an immutable copy the same as a verified copy?
They answer different questions, and this is the distinction worth carrying away. Immutability proves that nothing altered the copy. It does not prove the copy is still readable. Media degrades, cartridges fail, and an object can sit under a compliance-mode lock for seven years while quietly becoming something nobody can restore. The only way to know a copy is still good is to read it back and compare it, which is what Hiberden does after every write and on a schedule after that for disk and NAS copies.
Is an offline tape better than a locked bucket?
They fail differently, which is the argument for having both rather than choosing between them. A locked object resists deletion but stays reachable over the network for as long as your credentials work. A cartridge sitting on a shelf is not reachable at all, by anyone, until someone walks over and loads it. Neither one tells you the data is still readable. That part is a separate job.
Where to go next
- Cloud (S3-Compatible) covers setting up a bucket as a destination.
- The Minimal S3 Permissions Hiberden Needs lists every action in the policy and why it is there.
- Tape (LTO-9 / LTFS) covers how the tape copy is written and read back.
- The 3-2-1 Backup Rule, Explained covers offsite, offline, and how the copies divide the risk.