Introducing MagStor LTO LTFS Products, Thunderbolt / MAC / Traditional Options

[Tim Gerhard]

Hey all!

My name is Tim Gerhard and I represent the MagStor (by Magnext) brand of LTO tape solutions including specialty LTO drives/libraries with Thunderbolt or USB connections, and even MAC options for LTFS. We're a new sponsor to REDuser and you may have seen us at NAB Las Vegas the last two years. Magnext has been in business for over 10 years as a backup solutions company specializing in tape libraries. We also dabble in some server / disk / Barracuda Cloud / Fujitsu rugged laptop packages as well if you're not into tape.

First off, I'd like to showcase some of our flagship products that can also be found at our website specifically catering to DIT's, M&E etc. at www.magstor.com

All MagStor branded products include a 3 year hardware warranty, Lifetime Troubleshooting Support, and firmware updates for life.

The MagStor desktop line can come in single or DUAL drive options from one enclosure in LTO6 or LTO7 options. MagStor drives just plug into a regular power cable, no external brick is required.

MagStor TRB-HL7 LTO7 Desktop Tape Drive - $4950 USD

https://magstor.com/collections/mag...7-hp-lto7-6tb-thunderbolt-2-0-ltfs-tape-drive

Our desktop LTO7 thunderpro2 unit comes with 2x front facing ports that you can daisy chain other devices off of. LTO7 comes in at 6TB native per cartridge, and can run up to 300 MB/s.

One drive not enough? Go with our double decker drive in the same enclosure. https://magstor.com/collections/mag...to-any-mac-computer-with-a-thunderbolt-2-port

MagStor TRB-2HL7 DUAL LTO7 Desktop Tape Enclosure - $8100 USD

Last, but not least. We have our tape libraries that come in FC, SAS or ThunderPro2 (integrated module). New MagStor libraries come in LTO5-LTO7 variants, but we sell other older libraries of other brands if you need something older, just ask for details. Our entry level machine is 8-slots, but we have libraries ranging up to 560 slots.

Our libraries work great with any traditional backup software, but what really shines is YoYotta ID Automation ($990 USD), the first ever LTFS Software for libraries that doesn't require an appliance and won't cost you 50k like all the other guys.

https://magstor.com/collections/magstor-tape-libraries

This is just a brief overview of our flagship products. Let me know what you guys think and if you have any questions on applications of usage. We also work closely with MAC LTFS software companies such as PreRollPost (for our single/dual drives) and YoYotta ID (for our libraries).

 

[David Kellermann]

Hi Tim,

will there be a USB3/USB3.1 version of the MagStor TRB-HL7?

 

[Bob Gundu]

Great to see more options for desktop LTO.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Great to see more options for desktop LTO.

Agreed, I just wish the entry fee for these things would go down. Top of the line LTO drive is always $4-5k. I guess it's cause they sell less, but realistically these things should be like $2k tops IMO.

Not knocking MagStor, just the LTO industry in general.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Are all LTO7 recorded on different vendors compatible between them?

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Are all LTO7 recorded on different vendors compatible between them?

Correct me if I'm wrong as long as you have the right software to read the file system or compression that was used the drive should not matter.

 

[Tim Gerhard]

Hi Tim,

will there be a USB3/USB3.1 version of the MagStor TRB-HL7?

David,

We currently have no plans for a MagStor branded release of a USB drive, however, we're the North American distributor Unitex LTO USB products. Unitex currently only has the USB 3.0 LTO6 released, but they're diligently working on an LTO7 USB 3.1

You can find the Unitex LTO6 USB 3.0 version on our website https://magstor.com/products/unitex-lt60-lto6-usb-3-0-ltfs-tabletop-tape-drive

The downside of the USB drives currently is that 3.0 is too slow for an LTO7. Even the LTO6 gets capped at 140 MB/s versus it's native capability of 160 MB/s.

 

[Tim Gerhard]

Are all LTO7 recorded on different vendors compatible between them?

Patrick,

It depends on the format you write the file in, which is pretty much dependent on the software you use. For example the normal standard has been .TAR format used by backup software packages (Backup Exec, Yosemite, Acronis), which rolls everything into one big .TAR file that is proprietary to the software you were using to read it.

Starting with LTO5 tape drives you can use the new Linear Tape File System (LTFS), which is NON-Proprietary. LTFS is marketed as a drag-and-drop system, where you mount the tape like a hard drive and it appears as if it were a hard drive on your computer. The big OEMs such as HP and IBM offer free LTFS software that is very very basic and just does a single mount for you with no other features. If you want to use the free software, go with the HP version on HP drives because it has a user interface, IBM is this awful command line interface.

To summarize:

- New LTFS standard is non-proprietary, move to any other site without any specific software requirements other than free LTFS mounting tool (or read with premium software of your choice). Mount as virtual hard drive and drag-n-drop.
- Traditional .TAR format is proprietary. IE use Backup Exec to write the tape, you need Backup Exec to read the tape, and you cannot just grab 1 file quickly.

 

[M Most]

tar is most definitely NOT proprietary. It has been around for many years in numerous Unix (and more recently, Linux) distributions. It is a completely standard utility included in essentially every version of those OS's. What IS proprietary is individual vendors' own software which uses a similar approach but creates tarballs that require their software to read properly. That said, "standard tar" has and is being used by many, many companies for tape archiving (tar stands for "tape archive"........) on LTO and many other tape formats for years.

 

[Tim Gerhard]

I suppose proprietary was a harsh word on my part. Just about all the big software players do tarballs, which makes it difficult to retrieve unless you're using the same software.

The old CACHE devices come to mind when I think about people not being able to get their files back after their legacy device went bad. I heard at least 5 people complain at NAB about their old CACHE files being irretrievable, but I was able to connect them with a tape forensics company that has ways around those hoops.

 

[Tim Gerhard]

Agreed, I just wish the entry fee for these things would go down. Top of the line LTO drive is always $4-5k. I guess it's cause they sell less, but realistically these things should be like $2k tops IMO.

Not knocking MagStor, just the LTO industry in general.

Jarek,

The prices have actually been coming down over the years. If you go with a traditional LTO7 SAS connected internal drive you'd be around the $2600 range. LTO6 is going around the $1600 range now. Plus all of the library edition drives that used to be 15k each are closer to the 5k range now just to give you an idea of how things have been going. The 5k standalones are just specialty thunderbolt etc. for MAC users that can't use a SAS card in their systems.