LTO and USB 3.0

[Tim Jones]

[NOTE] – I answered the wrong question rather than what Eric actually asked 🙁 …
Hi Eric,

It’s not possible at this time. A Japanese company was showing off a USB-3 LTO drive solution at NAB, but it can only be purchased as a complete unit and won’t be widely available for some time yet. They have achieved this by creating a USB-3 to single channel SAS converter.

Unitex Japan Portable LTO Solutions

The good news is that once it is available BRU supports it on OS X, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD. There are limits to the performance on Windows because of the MS USB I/O stack limiting block sizes to 64K maximum, but it will work if more slowly than the native SAS versions.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

D’oh – leaving my embarrassing previous post for posterity. That’s what I get for trying to read the COW on my iPhone…

The answer to your actual question ( 🙁 ) is still a no, but for a different reason. However, there is a way to do this with eSATA drives. You can connect an eSATA drive or box to the Atto ExpressSAS using this cable:

SFF8088 to eSATA Cable

We use these with the ProBox from MediaSonic with success.

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HF2-SU3S2-ProBox-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4/

Again, sorry for the mis-direct in that last post…

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Eric Strand]

No worries Tim, thanks for the info!

I had heard briefly of the USB 3/LTO drives out of Japan but hadn’t actually read up on them yet.

Thanks again.

@ericstrand11