Linear Tape Open is a family of tape specifications ranging from 100 GB (LTO-1) to 12 TB (LTO-8).
Questions tagged [lto]
62 questions
4
votes
0 answers
Read LTO Tape ID Tag
LTO 6 Tapes contain a ID tag within the casing (I assume its RFID). Is it possible to read the tag via mt commands?
I would like to identify the tape that is currently loaded in the tape drive.
I'm not using a tape loader. Thus the barcode scanner…
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Jotschi
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- 1
3
votes
0 answers
Restore LTFS formatted LTO drive with heavily fragmented data
I'm currently experiencing one of those nice foobar situations where the primary backup of a certain project died and the secondary backup was written on and LTFS formatted LTO-6 - apparently by someone who had no concept of what the L(inear) in LTO…
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Michael Auerswald
- 31
- 1
3
votes
2 answers
Bacula: best practise for labeling and initial start
I'm currently starting with bacula for backup and have a few questions for best practices.
Current situation:
I want to back up a slow changing max. 12TB (currently 8TB) dataset to a external LTO4 drive. Due to the small incremental changes I…
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Henrik
- 668
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- 19
3
votes
1 answer
Connecting our first tape drive (SAS) to SATA bus
Our small team is considering buying our first tape drive for backups. However, we are still lacking serious enterprise-grade servers and have to rely temporarily on SATA drives in our rigs. Cost considerations argue against setting up a high-end…
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user177085
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- 1
- 3
3
votes
2 answers
LTO 2 tape performance in LTO 3 drive
I have a pile of LTO 2 tapes, and both an LTO 2 drive (HP Ultrium 460e), and an autoloader with an LTO 3 drive in (Tandberg T24 autoloader, with a HP drive).
Performance of the LTO 2 tapes in the LTO 2 drive is adequate and consistent. HP L&TT tells…
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hmallett
- 2,425
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3
votes
3 answers
How to write to a tape using hardware compression on Linux?
I have an LTO-4 tape connected to a Linux host and Linux creates all the usual devices for this tape as follows:
/dev/nst0
/dev/nst0a
/dev/nst0l
/dev/nst0m
/dev/st0
/dev/st0a
/dev/st0l
/dev/st0m
I normally use /dev/st0 and /dev/nst0 devices for…
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dtoubelis
- 4,579
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3
votes
3 answers
Turning an IBM lto6 sas HH drive from library to standalone, how?
new here.
I have been using a stand alone lto6 hh drive (ibm ts2260/3580 h6s) for two years. Just recently I bumped into an almost new ibm ts2900 autoloader with an hh lto6 drive in it and bought it.
Since I dont need a library or autoloader, I want…
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satantango
- 61
- 4
2
votes
3 answers
Is it worth using WORM Media for archiving? (Not needed for legal purposes)
Apart from regular backups, there is some data that I want to archive (e.g., old projects that aren't needed anymore).
I wonder if there is any benefit to using WORM media instead of regular tapes (apart from the inability to accidently overwrite…
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Michael Stum
- 4,010
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2
votes
1 answer
Does fast-eod make difference with LTO tape?
mt-st has an option:
fast-eod: space directly to eod (and lose file number)
I run the eod operation with/without this option, but is seems no significant difference. Does fast-eod make difference with LTO tape?
My test data:
HP lto6 tape…
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petertc
- 2,190
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- 10
2
votes
2 answers
Do LTO tape drive move when switching partition?
As everyone already know, tape winds between BOT and EOT when reading/writing data in the same LTO partition.
But what if a tape drive read data in different partitions? Will it move across wraps in a tape (similar to a printer head)? or it can just…
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petertc
- 2,190
- 1
- 13
- 10
2
votes
2 answers
LTO-4 Tape Write Source Throughput Needs
I am looking to begin a tape backup regimen and am looking to keep data flowing to the tape drive in a sufficient manner (120+MBs target sustained) but cannot figure out how to do so without a dedicated source drive/array that idles when not writing…
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Damon
- 429
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2
votes
2 answers
Determining LTO 5 Tape Expiration?
On our production setup we are using LTO 5 for taking backup on weekly basis,
Unfortunately we do not have any purchased document for LTO5 tapes due to which we are unable to predict the exact EOL(End of Life). We have linux servers connected to MSL…
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Mahesh Morankar
- 75
- 1
- 7
2
votes
1 answer
Device busy when reading from tape drive with tar
When I try to read a tar from tape with tar tvbf 2048 /dev/nst0, it returns:
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot read: Device or resource busy
tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
And lsof | grep st0 returns…
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Guillaume Clercin
- 21
- 3
2
votes
0 answers
Loose threader in LTO-5 SAS internal drive
Once more I have a tape drive issue.
I started seeing lots and lots of hardware errors with our LTO-5 SAS drive within our Superloader 3 changer. The main upshot was that the drive would think a tape was loaded when it was not. I can add specific…
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ACKumen
- 61
- 2
2
votes
1 answer
Are sony lto6 tapes mp or bf?
Most lto tapes specify MP or BaFe on their labels. Sony ltx2500g tapes dont.
I have two ibm lto6 decks and want to try to keep different tape brands and particle formulations on different machines just to make it easier to isolate tape/head problems…
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satantango
- 61
- 4