[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

So, it’s 2026 and things are the same or worst. We just went through the ordeal of our old machine dying, with the BRU License and working software inside… Even the latest ArGest release from 2022 has a very buggy GUI on modern Apple Silicon, so that was not feasable (tried it and had many aborted or partial restores)

We ended up coding our own software layer to be able to restore our whole 20 tape library. If anybody is still struggling with this, we just made this tool available as an external service. Just hit us up! lightbenders.com/bru-restore.

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Sorry. I posted twice. Thought I was still editing 🙂

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Closing the loop on this one, since TOLIS went under in 2020, bought by OWC, and then fully deprecated by 2022… Missing catalog files is not fatal. Catalog data can be found on the tapes themselves and the restore index rebuilt from there.

When the software died, and then our old machine died (with the only working software license), we decided to build our way back in. Our system surveys the tapes, rebuilds the full catalog (even on spanned tapes), and restores all the files validating every single one of them. We were so happy, that we decided to offer did as a service for other people in a similar situation, and we went live a couple of days ago! You can check it out here: lightbenders.com/bru-restore

The process: We survey your tapes, send you the catalog so you can decide what to restore (part or all), and we restore it to either your own RAID or create fresh LTO-8 LTFS tapes. Full process explained (including pricing) on the website. Let us know what you think!

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

An update for anybody landing here in 2026: the CLI walkaround works until it doesn’t, and every time there was a new MacOS update it made the walkaround more difficult. If your tapes are physically healthy, the data is safe. Don’t worry.

In my studio I went through the same madness. We had a 20 LTO tape vault written in BRU. I always thought I could always plug-in the old machine and recover, until that machine failed and there was no way to get a new software download, restore our license, or make the ArGest GUI work on new hardware without crashing… So after months of frustration, we built one. It runs on modern Apple Silicon hardware and we were able to restore our whole library, even with spanned volumes, failed backups, and all of it. In my case, I did have a backup of my catalogs, but when building the system we made sure it could work just by reading the catalogs stored on the tapes, and even work with tapes out of order!

After my ordeal, I thought it could be a service that others could use. You can learn more about it, including pricing, at this url: lightbenders.com/bru-restore

What we do: Survey the tapes and extract the catalog from the tapes records, send you the full catalog so you can see what’s in the tapes, and then restore the whole thing (or part) to either your own RAID or to brand new LTO-8 tapes in LTFS standard.

Please check it out, let me know what you think, and tell your fellow suffering BRU friends!!

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

For anyone still finding this thread: chasing old macOS versions to keep BRU PE limping along stops working at some point, and the GUI never ran natively on Apple Silicon at all. The tapes themselves are fine, it is the software path that is gone.

Two practical things before you change anything else: if a machine that last ran BRU PE successfully still boots, freeze it. No OS updates, no cleanup, since a working legacy setup is worth more than any workaround. And copy its BRU catalog data somewhere safe now. Catalogs can be rebuilt from the tapes themselves if lost, but having them saves time and doubt later.

In my studio we had the same problem with our own vault. We built and validated a recovery pipeline on modern hardware, migrated our own library, and now offer it as a service: complete tape catalog at survey, verified restore with a per-file validation report, or re-archive to LTO-8 in open LTFS so no proprietary software holds your data again.

If you want to check it out: lightbenders.com/bru-restore. Questions welcome here or there 🙂

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Thanks Neil, appreciate you taking the time to look through the site. Please let me know your honest thoughts!

Keeping a couple of old Macs alive is exactly how everyone has survived this, and for healthy tapes with intact catalogs it still works. What finally pushed us to build our own path were the other cases: catalogs dead or missing, ArGest refusing tapes it should read, and the old machine reaching end-of-life. If one of those scenarios ever lands on your bench and the old Macs say no, happy to compare notes.

And your point about clients preferring to let data die rather than pay for migration is painfully familiar. Part of why we publish pricing openly is so people can see the decision is smaller than they fear, before the tapes age past the point of deciding. The big recovery labs are priced for physically damaged media, which is overkill when the tape is healthy and only the software is dead. So I wanted this to be reasonable and affordable, from post-house to post-house.

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Nobody ever answered this one, so for the next person who finds it: an LTO-6 written by BRU PE that ArGest refuses to restore is a software problem, not a tape problem. The data is almost always still sitting there intact.

We were in the same position with our own vault. Our LTO backup masters were on BRU PE tapes and the supported paths all dead-ended. We ended up engineering our own recovery pipeline on modern hardware and validating the results file by file against what the tape itself records. It now runs as a service: tape survey and full catalog first, restore only after you see what is on the tape, every delivered file verified.

If anybody want to check it out, we literally went live with the service today! You can find it here: lightbenders.com/bru-restore it has details about the process and prices. If you already solved this one since 2022, even better, and I would love to hear the troubleshooting story!

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Late reply, but for anyone landing here from search: this exact symptom, a tape that verifies clean while the Import Tool reports No Archive Catalog Found, does not mean your data is gone. The catalog BRU wrote to the tape itself is usually still intact and the archives are readable even when the desktop software cannot rebuild its own database from them.

One thing worth doing right now, whatever path you take: stop re-running the import against that tape. Every load and every read pass on an aged tape is wear, and if this is your only copy you want its next full read to be the one that actually gets the data off. Write down the exact error text and the tape generation, then decide.

We hit this wall at our own facility. Our vault was written with BRU PE. When the software died we built a recovery pipeline on modern hardware, migrated our own library, and validated every file against the tape’s own records. We now run it as a service for other people holding BRU tapes: survey first (you get the complete catalog of what is on the tape before committing to anything), then a verified restore with a per-file validation report.

If anybody might be interested, we just became live! Details and published pricing at lightbenders.com/bru-restore. Happy to answer questions here either way, including if you just want to compare notes on doing it yourself.

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Yes. But I ended up having to spend the $$$ and purchase the ATTO card. After that, it worked flawlessly.

—
Juan Ignacio Cabrera
Colorist & Stereographer
——————-
https://www.LightBenderPost.com

[Juan Ignacio cabrera]

Hey there,

REALLY interesting thread. I just purchased a bare Quantum LTO-7 drive (internal) and I can’t seem to make OSx see it…
Someone recommended me an LSI-9260-8i SAS card, it sees the drive on the BIOS, but it won’t show it on the OS. Is that because the card is not HBA?

Jim, you were mentioning about the mounting Kit and testing… Have you tried that LSI card at all? What Internal SAS card would you recommend? Cables and software I have. Been using BRU (and recommending it to several people) for years, and I also use PreRoll Post for when I need LTFS.

Thanks,
J.

—
Juan Ignacio Cabrera
Colorist & Stereographer
——————-
https://www.LightBenderPost.com