Can’t access Tolis Support – Need to restore tape contents to RAID

[Robert Ober]

Hey,
Yeah, I have long suspected it was only a handful or less of folks.

FYI, from you initial post:
“I went to the Tolis support page (http://support.tolisgroup.com/) and get “Problem loading page.” I sent an email to support@tolisgroup.com and am yet to hear back.”
The email address there is different that what I posted. I posted, covidsupport@tolisgroup.com.

Hope you hear from them soon,
Robert

[Bob Zelin]

you must start to accept the fact that “its over”. Many companies end.

Bob

[Jim Curtis]

I can accept it, but complaining about it feels great.

James Vorley suggested Archiware as an alternative to ArGest. Bob, do you have any recommendations?

This is Archiware’s single drive solution: https://p5.archiware.com/desktop-lto-edition

[Mike Visconti]

Just following up: I’ve tried the covidsupport@tolisgroup.com but it gets bounced back as an undeliverable address. We’ve also got some support issues pertaining to getting a new autoloader set up, but in the last few weeks I’ve had no responses. So its time to look at the other options. I do hope they at least release the format spec from escrow so others (like Archiware) can use it to import.

[Bob Zelin]

Martin Greenwood – yoyotta.com

Hedge.video – the product is Canister. Can

Both are great. Both have great support. SO – what about your old .tar tapes from Tolis BRU ?

I don’t know – what do you do with floppy disks, SCSI drives, Iomega ZIP drives

Bob

[Glenn Sakatch]

I feel your pain. I bought the windows version in May, which turned out to be full of bugs. (Can’t properly span a tape being a major one)

Took forever to get through to support…finally did some research and deciphered Tims email address, and included him on a string, wondering what the heck was going on. Magically had a response from support the next day with a new beta build. (Coincidence… maybe) It still didn’t fix my problem, but did actually speak with support for about 3 days…that was about 2 or 3 weeks ago…haven’t heard back since. Boy am I glad I just dropped 500 Canadian down on this product. Luckily my bru Mac version is still going strong, although I’d like to retire the computer.

I also have preroll post, but I just don’t like how it operates as much as bru.

[Jim Curtis]

Thanks to James Vorley, who put me on the path of writing the entire contents of a tape to my RAID using the Terminal. But, unless as Mike Visconti suggested, Tolis doesn’t transfer their code to another developer, the real loss is going to be the database that tells me on which tape certain files are stored.

James suggested that I use an older computer and “freeze” my OS with a version of BRU PE 3.x and/or ArGest Backup 4.x that works, and use it just for that purpose. That may be a viable option for me, but may not be for others.

I’ve got around 100 tapes archived with Tolis products, and I might have to set up a station to restore them all to a RAID so I can write new tapes using another product, but I’d rather not.

Thanks for the leads on the other products, Bob. I will investigate.

[Jim Curtis]

It just occurred to me that since one can use the Terminal to read a tape’s header and contents to a Terminal window, that it should be possible for another vendor to write some code that would allow former Tolis customers to create a database by scanning tapes that would be compatible with their existing product.

Likewise, it seems to me that it would be also possible to figure out how to read or import the Tolis database and translate it to another product as well, no?

I’m not an expert on this, and have no idea whether this would be financially worthwhile to invest in the R&D to be able to import Tolis’s data, but maybe it wouldn’t be that difficult either.

[Mike Visconti]

The hope is that the second half of this comes to pass (from their web page):

“Okay, so what if TOLIS Group goes out of business?

We’ve placed the BRU source code in escrow with many of our major clients and offer it to others if their dependence on the actual product is that strictly regulated. The result is that in this case, the source code would be available to those organizations for continued development. Or, what if the principles decide they’d rather go fishing (or racing) than continue the business? In that case, we have a clause in our corporate structure where we would release the source code under the BSD open source license to the world.”

That would at least make developing an import process pretty simple, and hopefully with the cross grade business it would generate, a potentially profitable endeavor.

[Bob Zelin]

everyone here is starting to make me angry. You old bags ( I am almost 65) are reminding me of the “I have this CMX EDL – how am I going to read this” – or “I have this FCP 7 project – how am I going to read this”. You ALL had fair warning about LTO LTFS for countless years from now, and you DID NOT prepare for this. This applies to countless brain dead people (yes YOU), that won’t accept the fact that Apple has announced that they will NO LONGER support the AFP networking format (of which SMB has lots of problems reading files from) – you will NO LONGER be able to read HFS+ files, now that the new default is APFS. My Windows 7 business computer just died – but I have backups every week, and I bought a new HP Z series workstation and OH NO – they now use M.2 NVMe boot drives !!!! – OH NO.

Guess what you old brain surgeons – THINGS CHANGE – and you better be prepared for them. I get emails all the time from my old clients (OLD clients) that say “Oh, I have these D2 tapes, I have these 1″ tapes, I have these 3/4″ tapes, I have these VHS Tapes” – well guess what, unless you are willing to spend a LOT of money – you are SCREWED.

Remember that DLT is much less that 30 years old (but DLT tapes last for 30 years) – what on earth do you do with DLT tapes ? What on earth do you do with Cache-A LTO tapes ?

If you do not constantly migrate your data to the “next thing” – then you are SCREWED. And here we are – Tolis is gone, Tim refused to go to LTFS, and so did you (because he assured you) and now he is gone, and now you are screwed. And do you know whose fault this is ? IT IS YOUR FAULT. And it’s not just your LTO tapes. You better keep up with your file formats, and your drives. Because I am so heavily involved with storage, and have been so, for such a long time, I would see in the early days of SATA drives, all these “brain surgeons” that would say “oh SATA is terrible – nothing is better than SCSI” – well, even 10 years ago – HOW DO YOU READ A SCSI DRIVE ? ITS OVER !

Deal with it. SPEND MONEY. Buy new equipment. http://www.hedge.video Canister is great.

Yoyotta is great. Keep up with your industry. Buy new products. Continue to think like a young person. I do not care about your retirement (I am applying for Medicare next month !) – but it is MY JOB to keep up with all this crap . DO NOT DARE to complain about how things change to quickly. You either keep up, or you retire. I saw this in the film editorial days, I saw this in the CMX days, and I saw this in the early AVID days. This is an editorial forum basically, but if this was a FILM production forum, and I saw old bags crying about how they can’t get their Panavision or Arri 35mm film transfered properly, I would be yelling at them the same way. THINGS CHANGE – and it’s your job as a professional to KEEP UP. Want to play with your grand children – go right ahead – that is wonderful, but STOP COMPLAINING.

Bob Zelin