[Jim Curtis]

It may be Tim who has COVID. I hope not, but I got the impression dealing with support that Tolis is three people.

I upgraded to ArGest shortly after buying my 2019 MacPro that forced me to use Catalina. The first several builds were buggy, and I traded quite a bit of correspondence between a Kayleigh and some with a Marcos, who I inferred was the programmer writing the code, and Tim Jones. Perhaps Marcos is a person who could pick up the ball, and run with it.

One of my first issues was with importing my BRU PE 3.x catalogs into 4.x. There were several archives missing, and some of the data was jumbled in others. This is why a tape I’d made in 2018 disappeared from my Archive database, and led to this thread.

I still have DMGs of BRU PE 3.x. I suppose I could back up my catalogs, try an older version of the Tape Import Tool, and see what happens. But, I’m lucky to be hammered with paying work now, and won’t have time to give it a try for a while.

[Jim Curtis]

Neil, you wrote:

“If a client were to walk in with a Bru tape, even if I don’t have a
catalog of it, I can read the tape and import that into any Bru
installation. Of course, I have kept catalogs of every tape I’ve
written.”

Is this because you’re still using BRU PE 3.x?

This is the issue I had that caused me to write the original post. The most current Tape Import Tool looks like it’s importing the tape, but when I open Argest Backup, the tape name is on the Archive list, but it shows no contents. James Vorley helped me copy the entire tape to my RAID, but there’s no method to get at individual files or folders within ArGest.

If you’ve discovered a method to get tape contents into an ArGest 4.x Archive database, I’d be grateful if you could share it.

[Jim Curtis]

Bob, you crotchety old bastard, I love reading your cantankerous posts. You’re funny, like a clown to amuse us.

I read yesterday that the first LTO drives with native TB3 support are only recently coming to market, and they’re LTO8 (MagStor: $5K). So, SAS, a version of SCSI is still the standard for prior version drives, and people on newer computers w/o PCI need to rely on an external chassis to convert TB to SAS to use anything prior.

You’re right about buying new stuff. That’s a given for people in post production. We’re not averse to that. We’re averse to losing access to our data and media, and our concern is legit. You’re not wrong, but neither are we.

We’ve long ago smelled the coffee and paid to have the D1 tapes we needed transferred. I’m not unwilling to pay another company to make my Tolis tapes and archives readable.

I’m older (and perhaps even more crotchety) than you are at 68 (and a half!). One of my considerations is whether buying new technology will pay dividends before I get a chance to collateralize it.

My thinking is that the smart money is sticking with my LTO5 until it’s time to say “So long, suckers!” There’s nothing wrong with seeking a way to do that. As I wrote previously, I can repurpose an older 2012 MacPro5,1, and run BRU PE 3.x on it, if need be, without buying new stuff. Put in a 10GbE PCI card, and that lessens the pain of connecting to my 2019 MacPro.

Buying new stuff isn’t always the best solution. But, I appreciate your insight, perspective, and your delivery. Don’t stop amusing us.

[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.

[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]

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

[Jim Curtis]

If you have an older version of Looks that doesn’t have the keyframable Amount slider, you can split your clip with the Razor tool, apply two different looks to each section, and add a dissolve between them.

[Jim Curtis]

Robert, I did write to Tolis at that email weeks ago, and I STILL haven’t heard back from them. Or him, whichever the case may be. I’m starting to think Tolis is one or three people.

[Jim Curtis]

A big shout out here to James who went to what I consider heroic efforts to find a solution that would allow me to import my tape contents. Thank you, James!

I still haven’t heard a peep from Tolis.

Might be helpful to others to add that the Terminal command that worked only worked because the tape & Terminal were looking for the original file path written to the tape. I had to mount an external drive and change the drive name to the name of the RAID partition that held the original archive media.

[Jim Curtis]

So, I tried:

tapectl bru -xvvvf ntape0 “/Volumes/SAS RAID/ANTHEM restore from LTO”

and this familiar text happened:

bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 5, Input/output error
bru: [A121] load volume 1 – press ENTER to continue on device ‘ntape0’
bru: [Q120] (C)ontinue (N)ew device (Q)uit [default: C] >> C
bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 5, Input/output error
bru: [A121] load volume 1 – press ENTER to continue on device ‘ntape0’
bru: [Q120] (C)ontinue (N)ew device (Q)uit [default: C] >>

So, I put in a known good tape, pressed C then ENTER, and it repeated:

bru: [W130] warning – read error on first block: errno = 5, Input/output error
bru: [A121] load volume 1 – press ENTER to continue on device ‘ntape0’
bru: [Q120] (C)ontinue (N)ew device (Q)uit [default: C] >>

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.6