LTFS ”driver dependent” question

[David Cerf]

No, you should be able to read/write with HP, ibm or quantum drives. There were issues with version ltfs but now all is working week. There are other options for ltfs from companies like Crossroads.com.

[Andrew Rendell]

My instinct is that it’ll probably be more complicated than a simple yes/no answer. However, IBM’s site has this:

“Provides cartridge compatibility with tape management solutions based on the Linear Tape File System format specification and existing standalone versions of Linear Tape File System (on IBM, HP, Quantum, FOR-A, 1 Beyond and other platforms)”

which implies that there should be a degree of compatibility between manufacturers, or at least that recordings made on a Quantum should be readable by an IBM transport.

[Tom Goldberg]

We at Cache-A have done a reasonable number of cross-compatibiltiy tests and have kept in close communication with our partners at HP who have also done extensive cross testing.

So far we have not seen any cross platform issues reading other party’s LTFS tapes as long as the underlying driver version is v1.2 or later. Very early on, we saw problems where IBM had changed block sizes as allowed for in the spec but not matched by us and others; that issue has been corrected for a long time now.

Since that time we have had no interchange issues with Cache-A LTFS tapes going to other vendor’s implementations nor with good LTFS tapes from other vendors being read in Cache-A systems.

Note that we have had problems with improperly made tapes – we find tapes that have been ejected before the index was written, tapes with unrepairable file systems, and even tapes that users believed were LTFS but were in fact not. If a tape can be read properly in the v1.2 or later LTFS system that made it, there should be no interchange issues.

Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com