Help with LTO-3 hardware

[John Tissavary]

I have a situtation - got a new 'used' lto-3 drive, but all I have is a VERY ancient scsi card to test it with, and though the drive is recognized and passes diagnostic tests, and I can load & eject tapes, I can't get tapes to read or write.

I was hoping some charitable soul around the LA area might have a bit of time & PC running Windows XP with a (working) SCSI card that I can come test the drive out on to either identify it as non-working, or eliminate it and get a new SCSI card.

thanks,

JT

 

[Alexis Hanawalt]

I just got a used LTO as well - with a used card... although running on a mac, I'm going to be testing it out tonight and I'd be glad to share mutual experiences.

 

[Ernesto@toybox.com]

R/W to LTO

R/W to LTO

What software are you using to R/W? On the Mac we have to use a program that is tape aware such as Tolis Tape Tools.


Cheers,
Ernesto

 

[John Tissavary]

Using Retrospect for backup, Tandberg Data diagnostic utility for tests & memory dumping.

 

[Tim Jones]

What software are you using to R/W? On the Mac we have to use a program that is tape aware such as Tolis Tape Tools.

Ernesto, thanks for using TOLIS Tape Tools. And, we're almost done with BRU Producer's Edition for OS X.

Back to the OP's question, what software are you using on Windows? Also, are you using LTO-3 media or LTO-1/2?

Tim

 

[Alexis Hanawalt]

I'm using Retrospect. Will check out Tape Tools, though as happens somewhat often with sketchy eBay purchases, my LTO drive is a dud - so I'll be able to run full tests once I obtain a working unit. Retrospect and the ATTO driver software both successfully identified the drive... so, it looks like Retrospect is viable, though I've heard people express frustrations with the workflow of using the product.

 

[Tim Jones]

Will check out Tape Tools

Walt, keep in mind that TOLIS Tape Tools is not a specific backup application, but rather a set of tools that allow you to read and write tapes on OS X where support doesn't exist. Currently, OS X' versions of tar, cpio, and pax do not support tape I/O. Therefore, there's no native way to read tapes from other platforms (Linux, Solaris, IRIX, et al). TOLIS Tape Tools handles the tape I/O for you so you can get the data into those other tools. For example, to restore a tar tape from an IRIX system you could use:

taperead -f ntape0 -b 65536 | tar -xvv -b 128 -f -

This would read the data from the tar tape created on IRIX and restore it on the Mac.

Our competing product for backup and restore to Retrospect are BRU LE, BRU PE, and BRU Server.

Not trying to sound like a commercial :innocent:, just trying to share the differences.

Tim

 

[littleleopard]

I have an iMac 10.4.11 and I need to recover LTO3 data. The thing is I don't know which software they used to backup and I don't have access to this information. I'm using HP StorageWords 1840 (with a scsi/firewire converter) to read the tape and I've installed BRU LE (Evaluation Edition) to try to read it. But I get this message:

"BRU was unable to read the contents of the current tape. Either the tape is blank, contains non-BRU archives, or was created with a different buffer size than 128k. If this is a known BRU tape, double check the buffer size setting in preferences and retry the import."

So my closest guess (since I know the tape is not blank) BRU will just read BRU files, correct?

But if I get TOLIS Tape Tools will I definitely be able to read the tape? Is this correct?

I really appreciate any help here. And in case I can't use TTT is there any other software I can use to recover this data?

LL

 

[Vinit Borrison]

Alright, so trying to restore a tape using tape tools, and getting this error


taperead -f ntape0 -b 65536 | tar -xvv -b 128 -f -
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers


All i know is this tape was made by someone else with BRU PE, the same version i have now... I do not have the bru file from the original machine... how can i get the raw information off this tape??

 

[Vinit Borrison]

Alright, so trying to restore a tape using tape tools, and getting this error


taperead -f ntape0 -b 65536 | tar -xvv -b 128 -f -
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers


All i know is this tape was made by someone else with BRU PE, the same version i have now... I do not have the bru file from the original machine... how can i get the raw information off this tape??

 

[Erik Hansen]

Have you tried using the Tape Import Tool?

Did you rewind the tape?

 

[Vinit Borrison]

didn't try the rewind, trying that now... Hmm, is the tape import tool used through terminal? Don't see it as part of BRU PE....

 

[Erik Hansen]

The Import Tool is a separate app. Should be in the same folder as BRU PE.

If you need to restore a tape via terminal -
cd /path/to/where/you/want/to/restore
export BRUMAXWARNINGS=999999999
tapectl -v rewind
sudo bru -xvvvf ntape0 -b 128k -PA

When done, it will create a hidden Volumes folder. You may need to use the "Go to Folder" command to see into this folder.