Martin Greenwood
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Forum Replies Created
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Using the TB3 – TB2 adapter is no problem at all, we use them all the time. Even TB1 has 10Gb which is plenty of bandwidth for two LTO-8 drives. One of our Mac mini systems uses a TB1 expansion chassis with an ATTO H680 and it has written petabytes of data to dual LTO-7 tapes in a tape library.
The only limitation would be daisy chaining other devices so ensure you have any TB3 devices first in the chain, then the TB3 – TB2 adapter.
No problem to move the database over to a new Mac. Google for yoyotta export and this should take you to the right support page. Or contact support@yoyotta.com
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Good point Neil, the R680 card should be changed for compatibility with LTFS. It probably won’t affect the re-chucking behaviour, but may well be causing other issues.
Martin
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Hi Hari,
There is no software command to perform this “re-chuck” function. It’s a function performed by the drive.
Also LTO drives are designed to automatically mark and skip over tape when they detect write problems. This allows them to cope with occasional tape issues. However in your case the drive is doing this all the time, which is why after writing, a lot more space has been used compared to the size of the files written. So the tape capacity is reduced. This together with the fact that multiple tapes behave the same way suggests that it may be a drive issue.
We are seeing older LTO-5 and LTO-6 drives in use that have 6+ years of heavy usage behaving this way. Whilst it’s good that the drives carry on working, they are really at end of life.
I think it’s worth installing our YoYotta LTFS software as it reads diagnostic usage, error and health information from LTO drives and tapes. I’m not suggesting running archive jobs as I’m sure this will have the same issues, however the health information will be useful.
If you want to do this please download the demo using this link.
https://yoyotta.com/help/demo.html
Then mount and eject each tape in turn.
https://yoyotta.com/help/mountLTFS.html
Then save a copy of the log + debug as described here…
https://yoyotta.com/help/logging.html
Then send this for analysis to my email which is shown below.
Martin Greenwood
CTO
YoYotta.com
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LTO drives do this process of tape ejection and reload sometimes, it’s a re-chuck function performed automatically by the drive when it detects certain errors.
It is not common, when it occurs it’s either a drive or tape issue. Have you tried other tapes ? You may find loading the cleaning tape resolves it. If it’s doing it all the time with multiple tapes then the drive will need a service.
Martin
CTO
YoYotta.com
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Inside the unit there will be a SAS card and as David says you will need a new driver for an M1 Mac. Likewise a new driver will be needed for your SAS to TB adaptor. Magstor have released an M1/Intel driver for their tape drives, but other manufacturers are still working on this.
Martin Greenwood
YoYotta Ltd
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LTFS is a standardised format for storing files on LTO tapes that was introduced with LTO-5. Drives from this generation onwards have hardware changes to support the two physical tape partitions required for LTFS. One partition is used for indexes and the other for data. This partitioning speeds up random access and appending of files to tapes. So you physically cannot use the LTFS format with tapes prior to LTO-5. There are other methods of writing to LTO, like TAR, that just use a single partition. TAR will work from LTO-1 onwards. YoYotta LTFS software supports restoring TAR tapes from any generation (but not writing TAR) and also archiving and restoring to LTFS (LTO-5 onwards). BRU wrote to LTO tapes using their own format, so to restore you will need to use their software.
That was a long winded way of saying you can’t reuse your LTO-4 tapes with LTFS !! So after restoring just keep them as another backup and migrate the restored data to LTFS LTO-8 tapes.
Martin
CTO YoYotta.com
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I would suggest purchasing a SAS LTO-8 desktop drive, as you probably already have a SAS interface card as part of your Tolis system ? Hopefully it’s an ATTO card and you can use this to connect the new LTO drive. Then start making LTFS archive tapes for your new projects. Also you can use BRU to restore the existing tapes and migrate these to LTFS LTO-8 tapes. You can use software like our YoYotta LTFS that runs on macOS. These tapes will be readable using any LTFS software on macOS, Windows or Linux.
Martin Greenwood
CTO YoYotta.com
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You are in a good position as you have the LTO tapes and also the hard drives. If you have an LTO drive then it would make sense to write new tapes in LTFS format as this has cross platform support from multiple vendors. It’s probably easiest to do that from the hard drives. If you don’t have an LTO drive, then I would look at buying/renting a LTO-8 drive. Or if you don’t think you need the files for next 6 months or so then wait and use an LTO-9 drive next year !
Best,
Martin
CTO
YoYotta.com
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Hi Jim,
Just to clarify one thing… all LTO drives have a SAS or Fibre Channel interface. What I think you saw is an all in one solution. MagStor, mLogic, NetStor, OWC and others make units that convert Thunderbolt to SAS for an internal LTO drive. This simplifies connection to a Mac. Some also have an external SAS port so you can connect an older generation drive. Handy if you want to migrate from LTO-5 to LTO-8 for example.
Best,
Martin
CTO
YoYotta.com
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Hi Luke,
I know you are asking about Windows, but an FYI in case you don’t find any other solution.
Our YoYotta LTFS software will restore TAR tapes from standalone drives and if required you can re-archive the restored files to LTFS tapes. YoYotta Automation will do the same with a tape library.
However YoYotta runs on macOS… if you have access to a Mac then please try this out with our demo which has full functionally.
Best,
Martin Greenwood
CTO
YoYotta.com