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Finder Issues during LTO Use
Hello! I work for a small production company that has been using LTO 5 for a few years now. I just stepped into the position a few months ago and am encountering a problem. I am currently using 3 LTO drives to back up media to LTO 5. We do own PreRoll Post to use for certain things like Deliverables to Networks but my usual day-to-day workflow for backing up media to LTO is just by using Terminal and Finder with LTFS and FUSE OSX installed.
Recently I have been having a problem with one of my systems that I cannot figure out how to fix. Every time I mount a tape and try to view its contents in a Finder window, the tape just keeps on spinning and spinning as if it is just continuously trying to read the contents. The contents show up correctly in the Finder window, and the tape does finally stop spinning eventually if I leave everything alone, but as soon as I go to drag and drop media onto the tape’s Finder window (or really do anything in any open Finder windows), it begins spinning again and if I do drop media, the transfer speed is incredibly slow or will completely pause.
I know it is a problem with Finder because I have been able to successfully copy media to tape by dragging and dropping directly onto the Tape’s icon on the desktop (instead of using a Finder window) and the transfer speeds are normal. However, with this method I can only copy media to the first level of the tape and I assume I won’t be able to retrieve any media from the tape so this isn’t exactly a permanent solution.
I also know it is NOT a problem with the specific LTO Drive or a specific LTO Tape because I have tried multiple Drives and multiple tapes on the same System with the same result.
The System I am having this issue with is a Late 2012 iMac running OS X 10.8.5 with FUSE for OS X Version 2.7.1 installed. I am running 2 other LTO drives on Mac Mini’s and I have never encountered this problem with those.
Does this sound like a recognizable problem? Any possible solutions?
My next step is to wipe the system and reinstall everything but I would really rather not have to do all that.
Thanks!
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9 Replies
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It’s issues like this that make using PreRollPost much more reliable than the Finder for backing up to and restoring from LTO-5. If you already have it, I’d use it for all LTFS transfers. Frankly surprised you haven’t had issues before.
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LTFS mounts the contents of an LTO tape onto your desktop. This has advantages and disadvantages as you have discovered. The Finder sees the tape and thinks that it is random access media like a hard drive.
This means that you can drag and drop files, but as soon as you open the volume and the Finder sees files it goes off and tries to open each one to retrieve metadata and create thumbnails.
This creates loads of read requests from a linear tape and it will take a long time to show the information. So the behaviour you see is “normal”.You can streamline this by just viewing folders. So never put files directly onto the LTFS volume at the top level. Always drag and drop folders containing files then it will work OK. You can navigate through folders but don’t go right down to the file level.
The reason that this works is that LTFS stores all the file and folder names in memory so once mounted tape access isn’t needed for displaying folders. This is also why using the command line works quickly.
As the previous post mentioned ideally you should use a third party application to control access to the LTFS volume, but provided you follow the above rules that you can perform small simple transfers using the Finder.
My company YoYotta creates YoYottaID LTFS, this application for OSX provides media archive, verification, cataloging and other functionality for production and post.Martin Greenwood
CTO
YoYotta
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Thank you! This was helpful. I will look into using a third party application for our day to day backups, but I was just looking for some further information on how the Finder interacts with LTFS because I really hadn’t been having these problems with any of my other systems. So I still don’t really know why this one system is having these issues but I have been following those rules you gave and I haven’t had any problems today. So thanks for the information.
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Adam Hall is exactly right as to the reasons why this happens and if you haven’t encountered the problems it is no doubt due to the luck of the draw in how you organized the files and how you’ve traversed the file system.
Note that even if you’ve archived with baseline LTFS from a terminal, any good LTFS solution should be able to parse those tapes’ index tracks to provide a better way to look at what’s on tape as well as be able to presort restores by tape order for efficient recoveries. I know Cache-A systems do this, believe that PreRollPost should also do the same, and would hope YoYatta does as well.
Tom Goldberg
TGCS
30201 Rainbow Hill Rd.
Evergreen, CO 80439
mailto:tom@tomgoldberg.com
https://cache-a.com -
But remember, LTFS is free and open source – unless you want it to be useful, in which case you need to buy a proprietary, 3rd party app… ;).
This is why everyone should read our LTFS caveats doc. As long as you are aware of these issues, you can work around them.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Yes Tom, PreRollPost tracks file positions on thte tape for efficient sorting and retrieval. You may import any LTFS tape in Settings>Local Indices>Index Generic LTFS Tape
PreRollPost also creates its own thumbs for video files and presents tem in the Retrieve window (which is organized similar to Finder for easy navigation)
Offload with Confidence…
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Yes Tom, PreRollPost tracks file positions on thte tape for efficient sorting and retrieval. You may import any LTFS tape in Settings>Local Indices>Index Generic LTFS Tape
PreRollPost also creates its own thumbs for video files and presents tem in the Retrieve window (which is organized similar to Finder for easy navigation)
Offload with Confidence…
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Hi,
Was it ever confirmed that YoyottaID (LTFS/LTFS-Automation) definitely sorts files based on tape order prior to a restore?
Thanks,
Jeremy -
Hi Jeremy,
YoYottaID LTFS and YoYottaID Automation do sort the restore by physical position. If you watch the GUI during restore and verify you will see that the oldest archived items (first on tape) will be processed first.
If you want to retry our demo
https://yoyotta.com/help/demo.html
Martin Greenwood
CTO YoYotta
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