LTO tape usage (modern tape drives) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: exuvo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2022, 05:08:30 pm
content: Seeing as there was some interest in LTO on the forum i will start a thread with my journey using it. All costs include 25% VAT and transport as i live in Sweden. Almost everything bought on ebay.I recently bought a refurbished tape library (autoloader) Dell PowerVault TL2000 on ebay for $194 and a used LTO-5 SAS tape drive for $199.First problem: the drive is a HP drive and due to vendor lock in HP drives only work on HP libraries. My options were now to buy a HP library or a IBM drive (resold by Dell and Lenovo).For some reason IBM drives cost 3 times as much as HP drives with equivalent specifications. So i bought a refurbished HP Storever MSL2024 library for $487 (starting to go downhill here :D) which was cheaper than a refurbished IBM LTO-5 drive at $800. The refurbished libraries came with 6 months warranty.Both of these libraries are almost identical (dell one has a 4 line graphical display, hp has text 2 lines) with 24 slots for tapes split into 2st 12 bay sides that can be easily removed for bulk changing of tapes. There are also 4U models with 48 slots for just a bit more money.Both my HP and Dell libraries have good web UIs. I suggest separating them with firewalls and/or VLAN as they probably have security holes. Or just don't connect the network cable for normal use.If you want to spend way more money LTO-6 drives can be had for around $580 for a used HP and $1470 for IBM. They only store 1TB more than than LTO-5, 1.5TB vs 2.5TB, and are not worth it in my opinion.I you somehow get your hands on a LTO-7 drive for less than a kidney they can store 6TB and have twice the speed (300MB/s) as LTO-5/6 (140/160MB/s).For tapes i bought a new cleaning tape for $22 (50 uses), 10st new LTO-5 tapes from china for $225 and 100 used LTO-5 tapes for $490.Each LTO-5 tape is guaranteed to work for at least 200 full writes.My use case is monthly rotating backups on the new tapes, and archival backups on the used tapes (i.e. write a few tapes once a year and never reuse).Archival backups are safe from crypto viruses and accidental deletes, rotating backups are mostly safe from crypto viruses and accidental deletes.For tape barcodes the new tapes came with a sheet (100x96mm) of 4st empty stickers each. Used tapes already had stickers. Using the program glabels on linux i was able to print onto these with my laser printer (just about minimum paper size it works with, must go short side in first or it gets stuck). Use barcode style 39 in glabels, barcode size is 65.36x11.1mm, sticker size is 78x16mm, center barcode horizonally at the bottom and put whatever text you want above. Printing settings were paper type labels and monochrome i.e. black only as the text did not stick well if it used color. Glabels supports generating from csv files which makes it easy to print many.I also bought an old 3G/s SAS 2xSFF-8088 PCIe x4 card for $46 and a 1m SAS cable for $30. 3G/s should be good up to LTO-6. LTO-7 is much faster and needs a 6G card to work at full speed.The LTO drives have incredibly noisy tiny fans, i changed mine to a larger quieter fan using a 3D printed adapter, seehttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/replacing-the-cooling-fan-in-an-lto-2-tape-drive/msg4021672/#msg4021672. Fan noise is barely audible now. Drive makes some noise when running but quite pleasant tones so i don't mind :DFirmware for these things is a bit difficult to get.IBM requires a service account but dell and lenovo use the exact same drive firmware and have it for free. My refurbished libraries were already up to date.HP has a few years old firmware for free but i found the latest one on a shared google drive.PM me if anyone wants copies, i got libraries and drives LTO-5 to LTO-8.Programs i used on arch linux: mtx-git mt-st-git mbuffer amanda hpltt (itdt manually downloaded for IBM drives) tapestat (from package sysstat) maminfo-gitmt controls the drive and tape positioning, only useful if you want to do things manually. Point environment variable TAPE to your tape drive to ease mt usage.mtx controls the library and allows listing tapes and loading/unloading into the tape drive.mbuffer provides large RAM buffering so the drive does not stall if disk IO is intermittently slow.hpltt or itdt is used for drive diagnostics and firmware updating (firmware can also be updated from the libraries web UI).tapestat -m -1 shows tape read and write speeds.maminfo shows tape cartridge stats like times loaded and total data written/read. Good if you buy used tapes to know how much life they have left.Basic usage:https://www.cyberciti.biz/hardware/unix-linux-basic-tape-management-commandsI access my drive via /dev/tape/by-id/scsi-HUE2530E22-nst and the library via /dev/tape/by-id/scsi-DEC8320699 .You can also use /dev/nst0 for drive and /dev/sgNumber for the library (if you see /dev/chNumber instead of sg then blacklist module ch).For manual backups and restore i use:backup: tar cf - /aDirectory | zstd -qc -3 -T0 | openssl enc -pbkdf2 -e -aes-256-ctr -salt -pass fd:3 3< passwordFile | mbuffer -f --tapeaware -m 2G -L -P 80 -o $TAPErestore: mbuffer -i $TAPE -s 1024k -b 2048 -L | openssl enc -pbkdf2 -d -aes-256-ctr -salt -pass fd:3 3< passwordFile | zstd -dqcf | tar -xf -Amanda is a pretty old software (development started in the 80s) for tapes which is very noticable in that all the default settings are absolute garbage for modern hardware. The wiki is a mess but man pages are good.But the software works well, it can do multi tape backups, networked backups (its own client or samba), (multi level) incremental backups, has good reporting and keeps a local file list so you can easily find the correct tape to restore from if you only need to restore a few files.I will attach sensible settings that use aes-256-ctr and zstd compression. Put them in /etc/amanda/A temporary fast storage disk can be useful if the disk you are backuping from is way too slow to write straight to tape (my LTO-5 drive seems to handle write speeds down to 50% of max speed just fine) or if you are doing many small backup sets that would make the tape drive start and stop a lot between them.To start a backup i run "sudo -u amanda amdump archive localhost" or in user amanda's crontab "/usr/bin/amdump backup localhost; /usr/bin/amtape backup eject".When it is done i get a email with which tapes it wrote to and other details. For the archive backups i then remove the right 12 slot bay and remove the tapes it used and put in new ones.To register the new tapes i run:single tape: sudo -u amanda amlabel --barcode ROT001L5 backup ROT001multiple tapes: for i in {2..9}; do sudo -u amanda amlabel --barcode ROT00${i}L5 backup ROT00$i; doneReplace ROT001 with whatever the new tapes are called. My own printed tapes i use ROT01 to ROT09. My used ones all start with A and then 5 numbers.This writes a small header to file 0 on the tapes marking it as a amanda tape registering it to a specific backup config so it does not accidentally get overwritten by amanda if you do something stupid.Add a -f if a tape was previously used in an amanda config and you are sure nothing important is on it.Amanda backups can be recovered easily without the software itself.Position tape at the correct file using "mt fsf and mt status", file 1 if you only did a single backup set (1 DLE).First block is text information from amanda about what this backup is and how to restore it. Either skip this block with mt fsr or read it "dd if=$TAPE bs=1024k count=1 of=header".You should now be at block 1 according to mt status, everything following is the backup data, assuming you used my settings you can restore with the same line as up above or:mbuffer -i $TAPE -s 1024k -b 2048 -L | /etc/amanda/encrypt -d | /etc/amanda/zstd-compression -d | tar -xf -which uses the password stored in /var/lib/amanda/Skip zstd-compression if you did not compress this backup (the header will tell you if you did).Slight security warning here is that the header leaks some details about your backup like the backup name (DLE name) and settings used. So maybe don't label the backup my-banking-passwords if you care about not making it easier for physical attackers.Another alternative to amanda is bakula but i have not tried it.Assuming i used all my tape storage, 150TB used tapes and 15TB new, the cost is $11.14/TB including the cost for the extra library i don't use. Sum total i have spent is left as an exercise to the reader as i dare not write it T_T. Planning to allow friends to do archival on the used tapes if they want for a small cost.-edit-Had a parsing error in amanda.zip/backup/disklist on line 3, moved "tar-comp" down a line. Zip updated.-edit2-Updated config to include amanda-client.conf used for restores via amrecover. Seehttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/lto-tape-usage-(modern-tape-drives)/msg4025251/#msg4025251for usage.Added tapestat and maminfo to list of useful programs.-edit3-Fix wrong dumptype used for raw disks in example config.-edit4-I was getting bad performance when backing up ZFS and the culprit is amanda using sparse file detection on tar, disable it by adding "property "SPARSE" "NO" to amgtar application definition.

author: EHT
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2022, 11:05:34 pm
content: Thanks for starting this thread exuvo!I have somewhat similar to you. Its not easy but far superior than what I had before – an assortment of crappy consumer grade external HDDs.Reason I chose this solution• I have 10s of TB of data. Cloud storage for this is a significant cost. Cant remember the details though• I realised drives such as the WD ones use the lowest grade consumer drives (WD Green etc) which are not designed for long term use and will fail. Happened to my external HDDs and internal non-enterprise HDD & SSD, so I got tired of this.My setup• I have a multi-TB RAID5 setup with Adaptec cards, which I backup from and also offline some data to save having to keep growing the arrays• I have a Quantum Superloader3 LTO-5, 16 tape library in 2U rack connected to HBA in the same machine as the RAID arrays• I take two backup copies with one periodically stored elsewhereProblems:• Non-enterprise use of LTO is uncommon. For this reason, I couldn’t find a working cheap/free software backup solution which would properly support the tape library since these are enterprise devices, and enterprise backup licences are multiple $k. I will check out the above recommendation. Good to start this thread!!• The LTO and HBA drivers are not supported on Windows 10, only Windows server. I need to shift it all to Linux but that is a rainy day project I haven’t got around even with COVID lockdown! I presume the tapes, being LTFS formatted can equally be read/written from Windows or Linux.• If you’re not careful accessing the drive you can end up grinding to a halt seeking. If you try to move a tape whilst it is not unloaded, the loader still tries and then jams.• Despite the claimed longevity of the media there is a nasty built-in obsolesce. LTO-5 is not that old, but on its way out. The newer LTO-7 drives won’t write to it. For example, in the other thread, the OP had LTO-2. That means they cannot upgrade beyond LTO-4 to be able to read the existing tapes, otherwise have to go through and duplicate all of them using the old & new drives together. Not a problem if these are purely a backup though.• I’m not sure what is involved in upgrading the drive in the Quantum tape loader as there is some software / firmware dependency. I guess I’ll wait until LTO-7 is cheap.• Media is quite expensive, especially since I’m doing a double backup. Buying used tapes is hit/miss.• It is noisy – both the fan and the rotation of tapes. Still, I don’t leave it on all the time so haven’t bothered thinking about changing the fans.

author: exuvo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2022, 01:22:36 am
content: Thanks for your reply.Quote from: EHT on February 21, 2022, 11:05:34 pmYes on arch linux there are packages in AUR named "ltfs" and "ltfs-quantum" (i think quantum has their own variant) and i found some helper scripts athttps://github.com/amiaopensource/ltopersbut i don't think i will use LTFS for anything as amanda backup software is working well for me.QuoteThis probably depends on the library, my HP MSL2048 unloads from the drive first and then moves it away. Never managed to make it jam.QuoteWhile true it is not much of a problem for me as I will renew my backups yearly anyways. If you just want to keep the possibility to access old tapes i say just keep the old drive next to the new one. Most if not all libraries has place for multiple drives and even if not they are quick to change.QuoteUnfortunately i don't have any quantum firmware but i assume the process is similar to mine. Log into the library with the service account using the web interface and there should be menus for updating both the library firmware and connected drives. From the various change logs i found as long as your library firmware is from after when that LTO generation was released it should support it.QuoteI seem to have been lucky with my 100 used tapes buy, usinghttps://github.com/arogge/maminfoi was able to read the EEPROM inside a cartridge and it said one of them had only been loaded 15 times and barely written to. Assuming the whole lot is similar i have at least a hundred uses left on each.Where do you buy from? Even the new cartridges i bought are still half the $/TB price of CMR hard disk drives i could find (i would not want to use SMR in RAID).QuoteCheck out the fan replacement i did in the other thread, it really helped for me and was easy to do (assuming you have a 3D printer). I can leave it on all the time now if i want to without it disturbing and i sit 1m away from it daily. The only too noisy part left is when it changes tapes but that is a once every 3 hours during writing and i can live with that. The noise while writing or reading i find is an acceptable level/sound to not be distracting.You could also just buy long cables for it. I saw SAS cables that were 10 meters for sale.

author: exuvo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2022, 01:51:34 am
content: I only have around 10TB i need backed up so this is not really a cost effective solution for me from that standpoint but i really want an offline backup and this seemed the best option.Tapes are very resilient to bumpy transports which is good as i want to keep the archive backups in a distant building and cheap enough that i don't need to bring them back for reuse.Theft risk, if i for example stored my archives in my summer house, would also be much lower than with hard disks as the thief would not recognize them as valuable/resellable nor easily be able to read them even before encryption comes into play. Obscure technology has its advantages.LTO tapes are mostly sealed and if you keep them in the tight plastic case they come in i think they would be almost immune to humidity problems.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2022, 02:51:15 am
content: Thanks for starting the thread I tried a few years ago, in my linux forum. I can ride on your shoulders. Will help others. Now to read the above posts, wanted to say thanks while you were online. It is quite complex, even for an old tech/engineer. Prefer Linux, but keep a windows drive around for ease of use.

author: exuvo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2022, 05:31:13 pm
content: Thought i would add a section on recovery using amanda backup's tools. Probably wise to test restores at least once a year so you know everything is working as it should.First for an overview of what dates you have backups from you can run "sudo -u amanda amadmin ConfigName find".To actually recover files we will use the command "amrecover ConfigName". It supports connecting to remove backups servers and other complex things but for a single system setup you only need an amanda-client.conf next to amanda.conf with the following:conf "ConfigName"auth "local"If you don't have an amanda-client.conf it will default to tcp connection but you probably don't have that service running so it will just time out.cd to the directory you want to restore in then run "amrecover ConfigName" as root. (note that raw device backups, dumptype dd in my example config, always restore to the device)If all goes well you end up in a FTP-like promt "amrecover>" and from here we will select what files we want and from what dates."listdisk" to see your backup sets."setdisk BackupSet" to select a backup set to restore from.Now we can use "cd", "ls", "add file1 file2 file*.txt", "addx regex" to select the files/directories we want to restore."setdate YYYY-MM-DD" if you only want to see files from before that date (inclusive). It defaults to today.Use "list" to see what you have selected and if something is wrong use "delete file1" or "deletex regex" to remove it from the list.If everything looks good you run "extract" and it will start loading tapes and restoring the selected files to the directory you started amrecover in.The restore is a bit interactive so you have to enter Y before each major step like loading a tape, starting extraction from a tape. Needed as you might have to go get tapes and put them in your library or if you don't have that your single drive.-edit-For some reason if i use encryption i get a single spurious error at the end of amcheckdump or amrecover (if you recover the last file written):application stderr: /usr/bin/tar: Skipping to next headerapplication stderr: /usr/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errorsIt still recovers as it should so nothing to worry about and manual recovery from the same tape does not produce this warning but i have not yet figured out why it happens.

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 13, 2022, 08:23:02 pm
content: I didn't take the time to read all this except for the first about the HP compatibility issue. I've swapped LTO5 into a Tandberg autoloader that had lto3 originally but I use SAS drives. You have to check the pinout for the autoloader control lines but usually you just move the connector over to the correct pins.Again, I didn't read it all, but performance greatly depends on the source drives as well as the interface. I had my tape attached with fiberchannel at first with an FC to SCSI adapter. I got rid of the scsi, used SAS with larger block sizes and performance improved.I've had my eye out for an LTO6 but the tapes are so pricey and used tapes are not a good value at all.Lastly, I went to tape as I take the tape off and store it in my car, temperatures here are moderate, so that I always have my critical backups protected. By the way, I looked at a number of backup options and only LTO tape gave me the forward reliability I wanted. Hard drives fail, DVD rom and bluray fail, but LTO tape is good for quite a while.Jerry

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2022, 04:51:25 pm
content: Quote from: EHT on February 21, 2022, 11:05:34 pmYou sure about that?That screenshot was taken from 21H1 Build 19043.2006. But I'm fairly certain it hasn't been removed since.I'm about 99% sure that the last set of backups I did on my LTO-3 tape driver were in Windows 10. What MS didn't communicate effectively was that the backup agent/software no longer worked with tape. But the tape driveristhere, as I've just proved.

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2022, 06:30:25 am
content: I use LTO tape on win10 with cygwin and tar. works great, compatible with linux and other tars, and it drives the tape at full output, spins like crazy. There is a backup program written by a German guy that supports LTO on win10 but it is proprietary, something like zatdump? or ztdump?. Bacula and amanda backup support LTO from a server accessing win10 through SMB, but again, cygwin with tar works fantastically.Jerry

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2022, 02:14:08 pm
content: EDIT:Uranium Backup supports tape on Windows. On their website, they make it sound like you need a special version for that, but I emailed their support and they informed me that all versions will do LTO if you first format with LTOFS.Just out of curiosity, does tar work within WSL on tape drives?

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 09:34:24 am
content: Late to the party, but I've just picked up a HPE internal LTO-5 SAS drive to do periodic snapshot backups. No library, just a meatware loader (me).So far just using tar and scripting because we already have a comprehensive rotating backup system in place. This will just allow me to take monthly snapshots of the current backup and store them off site. Out snapshots are less than 1.5TB compressed, so I stage everything onto a 2TB ssd and then just squirt it out to the drive. I have encryption working and the drive defaults to compression on, so I've just left it as is for the moment.This is my first foray into tape since DAT back in 2000 and thus far I'm pretty impressed.Because it's an internal, I had to "tweak up" my workshop machine to have adequate airflow. It's an ancient case that only has 92mm fans, so it needed a few new fans and lots of gaffa tape over various holes to get the air to come through the drive.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 16, 2023, 01:39:01 am
content: I'd like to throw in my experience over the years.I once used LTO-2 as my backup, but now that my NAS has grown to about 30 TB worth of data, it's just too time consuming to use the old tapes/technology particularly as the interface was SCSI and compressed write speed to tape is a maximum of 10MB/sec. At that rate, it would take me over a month just in time taken to write data to tape, not taking into account delays in manually changing tapes.I loved the technology. It was reliable then and still is today. Those LTO-2 tapes are still perfectly readable.The challenge was finding free backup software that supported tape drives and would encrypt data before writing to tape (native hardware encryption wasn't supported until LTO-4). I even tried copies of BackupExec which ticked a lot of boxes, it was just overly complex and fussy. I remember using that stuff back when I worked as a systems admin using automated tape libraries and I hated it then too.At the moment, my only "backup" of data is the RAID-Z2 pool the data currently sits on (yes, I know, that's not a proper backup) and I've been considering my options. I don't like the idea of just buying a bunch of large capacity consumer drives as there is just too much that could go wrong (and I would need to make multiple copies).I also don't want to have too many types of backup as it would be time consuming to update them constantly. I think perhaps first level would be hard disk drive, and second level maybe LTO-6 or LTO-7.A good backup strategy has been on my to-do list for quite some time, I really need to get around to implementing something soon. I would like to use tape again, as it's proven itself to be reliable, easily transportable and easy to store.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2023, 10:56:28 am
content: All our "stuff" resides on a 36TB RAID-6 which is periodically replicated to another RAID-6 in a "cold" machine that sits next to the hot one. So we are "available" for most contingencies.Our "Backup" is a 4TB Seagate desktop USB drive (yes I know it's SMR) connected to a Raspberry PI in a physically separate building, but on the same network and switchboard. Every night the little RPi logs into each machine in turn and takes an rsync differential backup. Before it actually does the backup, it does a dry run to see if anything has changed, and if not it skips that one.As of last night it has a maximum of 1097 backups and a minimum of 6 (/boot on a rarely changed box).When/if a machine dies, I can use systemrescuecd to format the new drive/machine and rsync last nights backup into place and we're back up and running. This gets tested once a year as a minimum. We're on our third drive 4TB drive. When a drive fills up, I put it in the safe and start a new one.So we had *a* backup, even though it's only "on-site" for most stuff.If my house gets hit by a meteor, a direct lighting strike or any other mass EMP event, we lose all the machines plus the backups. So I went to tape. The monthly tapes get sent > 30KM away into another safe (along with the 4TB USB drive that contains 1 of 6 backups of our family photos). So unless Western Australia gets Nuked, we have a contingency. If WA gets Nuked, I'm not going to care about not being able to restore the backup.I'm going to make a prick of myself and say it, even though I know I shouldn't because you already know better. RAID is not backup. If you value your data (in my case irreplaceable family photos) you need backups, and a few of them. I have 4 on-site and 2 off-site and my wife knows where they are.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 16, 2023, 11:31:44 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on March 16, 2023, 10:56:28 amYep we will keep repeating it over and over as it's solid advice.I will however defend my lack of backups at the moment in saying that at least ZFS "RAID" is resilient enough to detect and correct file corruption, unlike traditional old-school RAID. I would need to lose three drives before my data is gone.In any case, this discussion is good, you've put a rocket up me to get it sorted, rather than putting it off for another 5 years.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2023, 01:45:08 pm
content: Lol, yeah...As the saying goes: "Doctors are horrible patients", i think often the similar is true for IT guys.And yes, considering how unorganized my private IT is, for me this is really true.At least i will not bitch and moan (well, maybe a little) if i really should lose data. I know perfectly well that it would be my fault.Regarding tape: I love the technology. But even used drives are quite expensive. At least the software (Mentioning Backup Exec gives me the willies) is not as much of an issue anymore. LTO-5 and higher support LTFS, enabling access like any other drive.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2023, 02:50:28 pm
content: Back in 1993 I had just bought my first computer. I became obsessed with filling up all the empty sockets, slots, and bays. One of the things I bought was an "Easy Options" tape drive. I didn't actually have any need for it and the software was really confusing to use. So after installing it and admiring the no longer empty drive bay, that was pretty much all I ever did with it.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 21, 2023, 02:30:15 am
content: Well, I've settled on a Dell PowerVault TL2000 auto-loader with two LTO-5 tape drives. Through a friend of mine, I managed to get the unit, along with a crate full of media and an SAS HBA for sub-$1000.For that kind of money, I don't think there is a better solution in my opinion.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2023, 04:14:11 am
content: Yowza, that's a good deal based on current pricing for LTO 5 stuff.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2023, 03:52:50 am
content: Has anyone done an old-school head clean on an LTO drive?I intended to get an external SAS enclosure for my drive, so I put a bid on a "unable to test" Dell LTO5 external drive because it was half the price of the bare enclosures, and when it arrived it turns out its had very little use and works fine.My HP drive has ~1300 movement hours and has never been cleaned. The Dell has ~800 movement hours and has been cleaned 3 times. Most of its use has been reading LTO 3 & 4 tapes, so perhaps they were old and funky. I thought I'd strip it down and give the head an old fashioned wash, so I've ordered some quality chamois cleaning sticks. I can find no information at all on manually cleaning an LTO head even though there are companies that offer this as a proactive services, so I thought I'd ask if anyone has any experience.I figured the usual tape path clean, then gentle wipes of the head in the tape movement direction with 99% IPA. Anyone have any better ideas?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2023, 04:35:03 am
content: I've never manually cleaned an LTO drive (never had the need). I just run the cleaning tape through when it requires it (and only when it requires it). I believe newer LTO drives will refuse to run a cleaning tape if it's not needed and simply spit it back out.

author: metebalci
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2023, 04:58:47 am
content: I also started using LTO(-5) recently at home. I can easily group the required files into different sets (and dont care that used space on media is not optimized) so each of my backups fit to a single media, so I am using the simplest method, tar and write to media. I have Quantum LTO-5 drives both model B and C.

author: seileren
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 15, 2024, 10:47:41 pm
content: Hi! I was handed down an HP (StorageWorks) MSL 4048 (G3 series) library, with an lto-4 fc drive (1840). The library is on fw 6.50 / 2.70e, and seems to work great.However, I decided to try out LTO-6 and went for an HP LTO-6 HH FC drive (C0H28A, with fw 25GW). In the library interface the drive lists as unsupported..Does anyone know if I can upgrade the fw of the library to get this to work? Searching for MSL StorageWorks results in some hits for version 6.90 (which I cant find), but for storeever there is a v9.60 (robotics 3.20e). Is this something totally different, or can I use it?Appreciate any answers----------------------Can report back that upgrading with the v9.60/3.20e fw was a success, and now the lto-6 drive is functioning as well.

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2024, 11:35:07 pm
content: I remember in some Youtube video hearing that they didn't recommend using cleaning tapes. They said it actually mostly spread the dirt around more than it cleaned, which sometimes made things worse.I haven't found a detailed HOWTO/walkthrough on how to clean LTO heads yet, but this video tells you to use 99.9% ISO and at least shows you what you're likely to be looking at:He has a number of very good videos. He's an LTO repair specialist. That's all his company does.Also, he recommends using the "correct" type of tape for your brand drive. He has said repeatedly in his videos that using the wrong brand tape can cause more oxides to wear off, as well as mechanical issues. This sort of runs contrary to having an LTO standard, but it still may be true.

author: exuvo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2024, 07:42:25 pm
content: Sorry notifications broke.BDT made most of the libraries hobbyists use specifically FLEXSTOR II:- 24-bay: IBM TS3100, Dell TL2000, HP MSL2024, Qualstar Q24, Overland NEOS T24, Fujitsu Eternus LT40, Siemens FibreCAT TX24 S2, Strongbox V24, Cybernetics CY-TLL-224, actiLib 2U.- 48-bay: IBM TS3200, Dell TL4000, MSL4048, Qualstar Q48, Overland NEOS T48, Fujitsu Eternus LT60, Siemens FibreCAT TX48 S2, Strongbox V48, Cybernetics CY-TLL-448, actiLib 4U.Special display: HP MSL2024 and MSL4048.The firmwares are mostly identical except for a manufacturer string check which you can modify to cross-flash firmwares. Exception is MSL as they have a different display, it still runs but the display becomes non-operational and buttons are remapped. For more details on how to do thathttps://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/167xd5o/howto_crossflashing_firmware_on_2448bay_lto/With that you should be able to get ex HP drives working in a library that supposedly does not support them. As when i plugged on into the wrong one it could still read serial number of the drive so it seems to only be different firmware.I have aquired firmwares for most FLEXSTOR II libraries up to LTO8. Send a DM if you want a copy.-edit-Regarding using the "correct" tape brand from what i have gathered the manufacturers used slightly different tape tensions so using the wrong one deteriorates the tape faster than usual (which leaves dirt inside the drive).LTO6 was notably different in that IBM switched to BF (Barium-Ferrite) while HP remained on MP (Metal Particulate) which apparently is even worse to mix.LTO7 and up are all made by IBM with Fuji tapes so no mixing problems possible there.

author: exuvo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2024, 11:06:44 pm
content: Here is the script i use to autolabel (with amanda) new tapes. All my used tapes have labels in the form of A then 5 numbers ex A12345, change the regex to match yours.Code:export TAPE=/dev/tape/by-id/scsi-HUE2530E22-nstTAPEX=/dev/tape/by-id/scsi-DEC8320699tapes=`mtx -f /$TAPEX status | grep "Storage Element" | grep "Full" | cut -d " " -f 10 | cut -d "=" -f2 | grep -E "^A[0-9]{5}"`for tape in $tapes; doecho -n "Found archive tape $tape"new=`grep -c ${tape::-2} /etc/amanda/archive/tapelist`if [ "$new" -eq 0 ]; thenecho -n ". New tape adding.. "sudo -u amanda amlabel --barcode "$tape" -f archive "${tape::-2}"fiecho ""donemtx -f $TAPEX unload

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 26, 2024, 12:47:30 pm
content: 1) Anyone ever get amanda working with LTO under windows native?2) I had heard quantum or maybe an ultrium site has the windows LTfS code for free download? I would like to try it under windows native. I looked and didn't find anything that didn't require a support password.3) as in 2, above, is there native backup software under windows that support LTO for free? I've tried zdatdump but it is non-standard. I want something i can run under windows or linux.I've been using cygwin/tar under windows and tar under linux on my cloud. It works but I would like to get to incremental backups instead of full dumps to LTO tape. I also want to test LTFS. I need to cut my power consumption on my cloud server. I have 46TB of mostly 3TB sas drives spinning and my power for the server and 10gb network is over $100 per month. I've not been able to justify any other storage options to cut power other than tape.thx, jerry

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2024, 04:03:37 pm
content: Quote from: cncjerry on May 26, 2024, 12:47:30 pmWhich LTFS code are you talking about? Are you talking about the drivers? I'm guessing the drivers are built into LTFS (AKA Spectrum Archive) Single Drive Edition.https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spectrum-archive-le?topic=system-downloading-ltfs-tools-windowshttps://www.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/swg/downloadFixes?parent=Tape%20drivers%20and%20software&product=ibm/Storage_Tape/Long+Term+File+System+LTFS&release=2.4&platform=Windows&function=fixId&fixids=IBM_LTFS_Single_Drive_Edition_for_Windows_2.4.5.1_10503&includeRequisites=1&includeSupersedes=0&downloadMethod=httpIn case you want to use IBM's Spectrum Archive backup software, here are some good Docs:https://www.spectrumscaleug.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/SSUG19UK-Day-2-B05-Tiering-to-tape-with-IBM-Spectrum-Archive.pdfThis video shows you how to get LTFS SE source code:And, more importantly, here's a pic. of a full height drive with see through case cover (giggle)At first I thought it was kind of frivolous, but when you think about it, it could actually help you to see what's going on in the drive for troubleshooting purposes.

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 26, 2024, 07:55:26 pm
content: thanks for the links. I'll see if I can get spectrum running.Interesting approach to tape case. I keep wondering about filtered air because the drives need some movement. On my tandberg changers, the air comes in the back and exits the front, same as on the LTO5 in my deskside. I see some dust in there but don't get any errors. Can your PC feed the LTO6 at full-speed? I can feed LTO5 as long as the blocksize is greater than about -b 700 with tarI see you went to LTO6, Hogwild, I was thinking about upgrading one of the drives in a changer to LTO6 but the tapes are pricey. It takes three LTO5 to backup my primary ZFS raid I call 'bucket' but it is unattended as it unloads and reloads the next tape in the sequential slots.thanks again.

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2024, 08:17:19 pm
content: Nah, I'm just an NPC (non-player character) at the moment. The last drive I had was an LTO-3, and that was years ago.Right now, I'm hunting for a used drive, possibly one of the mlogic MTape models with Thunderbolt 2 or 3. I don't need blinding speed, as I only need to backup a couple of simple desktop PCs.I never buy tapes retail. I buy them at very reduced prices on eBay or at a corporate IT surplus place not too far from me.

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 26, 2024, 10:21:07 pm
content: I think the best LTO value is LTO-5 because it has LTFS and decent capacity of 1.5TB native. I buy the tapes new for $68 for a pack of 10. I've bought 10 new Quantum tapes for $5 per recently. The last LTO-5 drive I bought was like new for $125 including shipping. I was able to slip it into a Dell T-410 I have as a primary workstation. It's old but has dual processors about 24 cores. The server is a Dell now but I used DL380s until the electric bill ran up. The biggest power hog I have is the 10Gig switch as I ran fibre between my primary work areas. It sucks 120w and that works out to $32 in power a month for switching.I tried downloading Spectrum from IBM but I had to make an account as even though I worked for them for 25yrs, my old ID was retired I guess. The verification email never came thru so I'll have to keep trying.thx again,Jerry

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 30, 2024, 05:11:44 pm
content: I was able to get LTFS working with one of my LTO-5 drives. Interesting, and I'll admit I am a tape person, or would that be a tape-nut? If anyone else tries it, you need to install with administrator privileges. That took a while to figure out.Also saw an article recently on the Exabytes of LTO tape sold world-wide last year proving that it is still going strong:A record 152.9 exabytes of total compressed tape capacity shipped in the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 3.14 percent over 2022. The figures were released by the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), a group comprising of HPE, IBM, and Quantum.Granted, most of that was shipped to me, it seems.I was never able to get the IBM version working, maybe had I installed with admin priv's.Jerry

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2024, 05:15:24 pm
content: Using the instructions I linked to, or with another method?I believe the right term is "tapehead". Or at least, that would make sense, don't you think?

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 30, 2024, 06:08:49 pm
content: Mr. Hogwild,I tried the instructions you linked for IBM Spectrum and it installed, but I got the same error that I had later with the HPE version. It has something to do with privileges so when you do the install, you have to "run as administrator'. That fixed the later problem with HPE but I haven't tried the IBM Spectrum software again. I'm testing the HPE and once done, I'll try starting Spectrum again.It's a cool way to do backups as it looks like a disk drive. Previously, I was using tar under linux and tar under cygwin Windows. Both ran the tape at full speed, sometimes over 200MB/sec. LTFS seems to pause now and then and when it hits a large file, say 100GB, it stops updating the transfer window.I can still use tar on unformatted LTFS tape.The economics and security are pretty good. I bought QTY 10, 1.5TB tapes for $68, so that's 15TB of native storage and with drive compression it could be 2X or higher. I use 3TB SAS drives that consume about 7W per, so backing off to tape saves $18.64 per month in power @ .37kw/h (mirrored) with a breakeven of 3.5 months, better with compression. I take my important stuff and keep it in the car and the pictures and things are in a grab bag. We had 10,000 homes destroyed about 40 miles north of us, so it happens. Two years ago, we had planes dropping fire retardant on the hill above us after something caught fire. They say people dragging chains cause a lot of fires along the highway. Tapes are good for 30yrs, DVDs less than 10, CDs about the same.ThanksJerry

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2024, 11:06:44 pm
content: Glad to see this is coming alive.

author: alan.bain
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2024, 07:24:43 pm
content: I've been using a second hand HP LTO-6 tape drive for backups for some time but have been a bit frustrated by the (lack-of) software support. To test it out I used Veeam backup which does support basic tape use on windows for the free version, but it is really a box imaging solution and is vastly overkill for my needs (with also an added worry about its meta-data storage and backing that up as it is very "black-box" like i.e. when it goes wrong the diagnostics about what it is doing are very limited).The free version only supports the file-by-file back up to tape (the non-free ones will write machine/VM backup images to tape) which does work for backing my NAS (but comes with a warning about slowness as the number of files increses). I was originally planning to look at Bacula, but on careful reading the small print, the windows version is agent only and relies on the server (and tape management) running on unix.I've used so many OS-es over the years (from AT&T v7 onwards) that I'd be happy to use unix, but I'd rather not add anorther server to the mix just to run unix and do backups (and sadly most of the applications I need to use are windows only, or I only have windows licenses for them, but I do use cygwin).Suggestions of better programs to try would be very welcome from me as well. And yes like others I use tape because of issues with RAID and data loss in the past. Tapes can easily be stored off site...

author: cncjerry
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 03, 2024, 10:35:30 am
content: I use LTFS now and it works great under Win10. I was using tar under cygwin, have you tried it? I tried Bacula but it is too complex for my needs.

author: Squarewave
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2024, 04:44:39 pm
content: Interestingly I've just found this thread whilst browsing, searching with how to get started with an LTO drive and tapes I've got. Seen bacula, but that's Linux and I don't understand any of the linux blurb.

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2024, 04:52:07 pm
content: It's paid software, but Uranium backup does LTO tape.https://www.uranium-backup.com/tape-backup/

author: tunk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2024, 05:10:18 pm
content: There's a list of backup software here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backup_software

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2024, 05:20:15 pm
content: Yes, but lists like those never include whether or not the software supports tape, so IMO not terribly useful.

author: Squarewave
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2024, 09:22:03 pm
content: Quote from: Hogwild on December 28, 2024, 04:52:07 pmI can't find on that website which OS are supported.

author: Squarewave
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2024, 09:23:16 pm
content: Quote from: tunk on December 28, 2024, 05:10:18 pmThat list isn't entirely accurate, as it says bacula will run on Windows, but that's only as a client and not the server.bacula looks good, but far too complicated to install on linux, I gave up after too many failed attempts at the command line gibberish.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2025, 07:15:26 am
content: Can the OP give a update? I was drooling over a LTO9 internal drive. It seems prices skyrocket at 7.With how big games are getting, and mod content, I wonder if this form of storage might get more popular if some mod content repository goes down. I wonder what kind of file sizes we will get with AI assisted development of custom models, levels and graphics in a few years.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2025, 01:52:31 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 08, 2025, 07:15:26 amOn what? Come up with some specific questions and you might get answers.Also, the OP hasn't logged in since August.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2025, 02:46:09 am
content: a update

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2025, 08:43:49 am
content: Especially regarding games, i don't believe a tape backup of game data beyond the actual installation is sensible.So many games nowadays require an internet connection anyway. If the game is abandoned by the publisher, it will not work anymore, and all the backed up data is worthless. As long as the game is supported, and often still afterwards, you can download the game again, should you have lost the data.There are gameshops like GoG that sell games that do not require internet and provide offline capable installers for said games. But these are mostly on the smaller side, also not really justifying the use of tape backup.Also - as long as GoG exists - you can download the games again. You can even notify support to get access to an older versions if you need it.You are likely right that AI based games will be bloated, size wise. But, at least looking at the way things appear at the moment, i would somewhat doubt that games with a lot of AI based content are actually worth backing up at all...

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2025, 10:02:10 pm
content: mods & custom content might get insane with AI assisted graphics design. I think smething simple like a bear (animal) might be in the hundreds of GB soon enough when someone bored sits for 2 weeks optimizing hair patterns

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2025, 01:11:12 am
content: Glad this lto thread is kept alive. I have a w10 box i want to upgrade, has HP lto board, optical stuff or serial and fear newer mainboard, if need to get w11, etc won't have drivers anymore. And basically forgot the billions of hoops I jumped through. Had it on a Linux distro in the same box ,I think.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2025, 08:58:03 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 09, 2025, 10:02:10 pmAs a player i wouldn't give a flying eff about a mod like that.Utterly insane.I already ignore games that don't respect my time by implementing too much fluff content and grinding. I can easily ignore games (or mods) with ridiculous storage requirements as well.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 01, 2025, 09:31:56 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 16, 2023, 01:39:01 amThis is what I said 2 years ago, and finally, just this week, I pulled my finger out and finally set up a tape backup solution. It took a solid few days to get things up and running.I ended up with an Dell TL2000 tape loader with LTO-5 drives, which is connected to a Windows 2022 server with BackupExec 2010 R3. The reasons I went with this combination of software was largely because I have licences for them. I'm still perfecting my method, but my first, full backup of my NAS is about to complete; 22+ terabytes of data which has taken around 2 days.There are very few free/cheap alternatives for backup software that supports tape drives/libraries, and the ones that do are quite tricky to set up.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2025, 10:38:26 am
content: Oh, BackupExec... I have something of a love/hate relationship with that softwareIf it works, it's great. I like the UI, even the newer one, it's mostly easy to set up.But sometimes it just does not want to play ball...

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 01, 2025, 12:36:55 pm
content: Quote from: Ranayna on March 01, 2025, 10:38:26 amMy feelings exactly. I was getting some odd behaviour, but a reboot fixed it. I think as I was plugging in and swapping around some SAS cables, something got upset. But it has been pretty reliable ever since.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2025, 09:06:03 pm
content: Glad this is still alive. I only have a LTO card by HP in a pci slot on an old mainboard. I also have to force cool it as it is designed for a server in its airflow.Is there any USB C to LTO adapter at a reasonable price?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 16, 2025, 11:24:32 pm
content: Quote from: jh15 on March 16, 2025, 09:06:03 pmWhen you say "LTO card", I assume you mean a HBA? They use a standard interface (e.g.: SAS) to connect all kinds of enterprise equipment, and aren't exclusive to LTO tape drives.I've never seen any kind of adapter that would allow you to connect an LTO drive to a USB port. Something to consider is that equipment such as tape drives, disk arrays etc... are designed for enterprise, not home use, therefore you're not going to see the same kinds of interfaces that you commonly find on end-user computers. Once you start playing with enterprise gear, it's an entirely different world to a regular "home lab".

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2025, 02:25:08 am
content: Yes, it is a SAS card not specific to LTO.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2025, 04:35:26 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 16, 2025, 11:24:32 pmI respectfully disagree. In my experience anyone with a "home lab" is at least using possibly several (multiple) generations old enterprise gear. USB is not, and will never be "enterprise". Thunderbolt, perhaps, but it shares nothing more than a connector with USB. Enterprise requires and is built around determinism and reliability and USB has neither.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 18, 2025, 12:08:18 am
content: Quote from: BradC on March 17, 2025, 04:35:26 amI understand what you mean, but I think there are two types of "home lab". You have those like many of my friends have their own NAS's but still using consumer hardware and their network infrastructure is built on TP-Link etc... then you have those who literally just use enterprise products (old or otherwise). It's the latter camp I'm talking about. In that space, you're barely going to be using USB for anything more than connecting a keyboard and mouse (maybe).Things like tape drives very much belong in this camp as well. If someone is talking about tape drives, I'm assuming a proper enterprise setup.

author: Foxxz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 19, 2025, 03:45:04 pm
content: I am using Unitex LTO drives. You can get them with a USB and/or SAS interface. They work great under linux via USB and LTFS works well as well. I had to compile the LTFS software I found on github but that was easy. I didn't have to do anything driver-wise. I bought mine here:https://ltoworld.com/collections/unitex-lto9Drive speed on the LTO9 drives is about 300MB/s. Tapes aren't terribly priced when you consider the storage size. When you insert an unused tape it goes through a calibration phase which takes around 45 minutes.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 19, 2025, 11:46:30 pm
content: Quote from: Foxxz on March 19, 2025, 03:45:04 pmThis seems quite low to me. Is this uncompressed data? If it were compressed, I'd easily expect double that.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2025, 12:07:15 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 19, 2025, 11:46:30 pmTheoretical is 400MB/s uncompressed. I see no point in quoting "compressed" data rates which are based on some theoretical magic handwaving 2.5:1 compression ratio which is almost impossible to hit. Backing up anything that is actually compressed suddenly brings that crashing back down to the base rate anyway.

author: Foxxz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2025, 03:57:49 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 19, 2025, 11:46:30 pmUncompressed data and drive compression off connected via USB3 5gbit on an LTO9 drive.I did some tests using dd and got 315MB/s read and 335MB/s write. I didn't stream a whole tape so its possible it may vary based on how full or empty the tape spool is (constant angular velocity).When using the drive with LTFS with the tape encryption turned on I get 290-300MB/s.I've read that the larger (1.5 bay?) drives are faster.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2025, 01:57:29 am
content: Foxxz, thanks for the link, looking into it at this moment.edit: yikes, just saw the prices, but understood for enterprise.

author: Foxxz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2025, 02:28:10 am
content: Quote from: jh15 on March 16, 2025, 09:06:03 pmI tried a USB to SAS adapter on an LTO tape drive. While the adapter worked on SAS hard drives it did not work on the tape drive.Curiously enough the LTO tape drives I played with had a 10mbps ethernet interface for firmware upgrades via a pin header.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2025, 02:45:37 am
content: i'll have to set up the old box as it was working and clone it to an iso. I wouldn't trust the free w10 to last forever, and I had the LTO running on Linux.I think I will dedicate the box to just run the LTO sas hardware. i do have paid W10 pro retail I could play around with on some other machines.I will look into some newer pci boards, and maybe some LTO cards, been years, memory faded. Graybeards do not have non-volatile memories, it seems.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2025, 05:22:19 am
content: Quote from: jh15 on March 21, 2025, 02:45:37 amThis is what I have. A dedicated box with 2 x 2TB SSDs, an 8TB HD and the LTO drive. Once a month it gets fired up, all the backups get rsynced and then each one is staged and compressed to one of the SSDs before being spooled to tape.QuoteAbout 20 years ago I recognised my "impressive" memory wasn't what it once was. I could completely dismantle a motorcycle into a tub of bits, then 9 months later re-assemble it perfectly without reference to any documentation. One day I woke up and looked at the box of bits and said "maybe I'd better check the manual".I now have log books and text files documenting what I did, why I did it and when I did it so that next time I need to do it I can scan the files to see what I did last time I did it, and why I did it that way. 15 years ago I set up DKIM on our DNS/mail servers. Without that log I'd have absolutely no idea how or why I did what I did. My logs are also backed up on LTO.The hardest part these days is remembering to fill out the logs!

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 03:30:32 am
content: And remembering where you put them.I am going to look into my setup, I had unplugged and stored the fiber optic card in an esd bag, and kept the lto4 and lto5 drives covered.I still want to make some iso's before waking everything up. I am afraid of losing drivers and such if it calls home.Thanks for keeping this alive.

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2025, 07:58:29 am
content: To complement my BluRay adventures (see other thread), I've just bought an LTO 4 drive on ebay for <£100.Its an external drive with a SAS interface, so I now need to get a SAS card and a SAS cable and some tapes.Ought to work nicely with my old PC once I've got it built up again.Wish me luck.

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2025, 10:08:11 am
content: A few months later and I've finally got everything hooked up and written some data to a tape.SAS HBA is a Dell one which works out of the box on my Debian system. HP LTO4 tape drive (model 1760) is recognised straight away.mtcommand works to wind the tape back and forth etc.tarcommand works to write files to the tape and is nowhere near as complicated to use as the internet makes it out to be.tar --create -b 2048 --file /dev/nst0 path/to/data/writes a tar archive straight to the tape. I haven't experimented with different block sizes yet, but if I omit the-b 2048, the motors go faster and slower and it 'shoe-shines' quite a bit. With the much bigger block size it writes it more or less in one go.It took about 5 minutes ish to write 25GB of DVCAM video files (2 hours worth of video). Just copied a load of intraframe HD video totalling 160GB and it took less than 35 minutes.I'm not bothering with encryption as I don't need it to be encrypted, nor am I bothering with compression, as most of the data I am storing (video) is already compressed.I think this will do nicely for my backup and archiving needs.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2025, 12:37:29 pm
content: Holy crap. So a couple of years ago I bought 2 LTO-5 drives, 26 LTO-5 tapes and 5 LTO-4 tapes (mistake).I opened the last box (5) of LTO-5 tapes yesterday, so I thought I'd have a look at buying another box. E-bay has gone insane! I was paying between $60-$100 for a box of 5. People are asking triple that, or even 50% more than that for used tapes.I had always planned to rotate the tapes anyway, and I don't really need more than 24 months of backup on tape (I have 2 with long term archive data on them) so I'll hit the end of the box and start overwriting the first ones.So while I previously recommended LTO as affordable long term archive/backup, I can no longer do so. I dunno what the fuck has happened. Maybe the world read this thread and went "hey we can make good here".

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2025, 11:40:51 pm
content: Just wondering, what doesblock number = -1mean in mt status?Code:root@debian:/home/scoates# mt -f /dev/nst0 statusdrive type = 114drive status = 1174405120sense key error = 0residue count = 0file number = 8block number = -1This is after I've recorded 8 files onto the tape (files 0-7). If you run the command mt eom it winds the tape to the end of the data so you can append new files. So it is correct to be at file 8, but what does block -1 mean?

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 02:18:27 pm
content: Did you ever find out?

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2025, 11:08:52 pm
content: Nope.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2025, 12:49:10 am
content: Quote from: steve30 on September 19, 2025, 11:40:51 pmIt looks like it means there's no block there to seek to. If you did an mt bsf 1 it should show file number = 7 and block number = 0.I'm due a set of backups, so I'll fire up the machine with the tape drive tonight to verify that.Edit : Nup. A written tape rewound to start shows correct file = 0, block num = 0, but after file 0 each file locates to block number = -1. I'm out of ideas.Edit, Edit : A freshly unwrapped blank tape also reports file = 0, block num = 0.

author: steve30
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2025, 03:29:05 pm
content: Thanks. That makes sense that it might be because its about to start a new file but there's nothing there yet. Whatever it means, it works fine.