[David Regenthal]

I have been using LTO-2 (and now LTO-3) for the past 18 months with the HVX200. I have had zero issues (losses) to date.

I do not know if there is cross-platform software. I use Yosemite Backup on an XP Pro workstation. As far as I know (haven’t tried) you can set it to store the catalog on the tape, but I think it would probably still have to be read-in by the same software on a different machine.

LTO is faster than the others–LTO-3 will backup a couple hundred gigs an hour. It is probably a more widely accepted (and long standing) means of tape backup (think banking industry, department of defense, etc.)

LTO-3 drives are backwards compatable (read/write) with LTO-2 tapes.