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LTO8 Media Shortage

T

Tim Gerhard

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Hey all,

Just a warning that LTO8 media / cartridges are extremely hard to get right now. There is a lawsuit between Sony and Fujifilm for LTO media currently.

Production has stopped on LTO8 media and nobody knows when the court will allow production again. If you have an LTO8 tape drive, be sure to grab media if you see it fast because it could be months before they come back.

First the trade war 25% tariffs on LTO tape drives, now this is happening......
 
Wow, that is really weird. I hate it when hardware makers declare war on each other, then what really happens is a lot of shrapnel starts hurting their customers.

I think backup media is the last form of tape that Sony currently makes, so it's kind of their last stand in this area.
 
Any update on this? Ebay is pretty short on LTO-8 stuff.
 
All of the distributors are out of stock with no ETA on incoming still.

I stockpiled LTO8 cartridges once I heard this was happening so my customers are still covered. If anyone needs some LTO8 cartridges, I can sell them at a decent price.
 
Has anyone heard of a resolution. I was just about to order a LTO drive, but now I'm not so sure this would be wise.
Does this legal batter concern the whole world or just USA?
I guess in theory one could use LTO7 drives instead.
Andreas
 
I'm still trying to find out what is going on. According to this article, they said Oct 25th one case will have a judgement, and another in Dec. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/the-future-of-the-cloud-depends-on-magnetic-tape

A judge is scheduled to announce his preliminary decision in Fujifilm’s latest case against Sony by Oct. 25. A final decision in Sony’s case against Fujifilm is slated for December, according to the ITC. Both companies declined to comment for this story.
 
I still would recommend just getting LTO8 instead of LTO7. The price difference is very slim between the two. You can always just use LTO7 media until LTO8 media comes back next year. I don't know why IBM hasn't thrown money at getting this resolved since it effects them the most.
 
Hi guys
I neeed to do lots of backup so though I would either go for a tape drive or standard harddrive.

Has anyone tried the LTO7 Type M? As I understand the drivers are identical to LTO7, but you initialize them with an LTO8 drive, then you get 9TB instead of 6.
According to my calclations a LTO7 drive would cost about 6 pounds/TB while a 14TB Toshiba drive would cost 32 Pounds/TB so it is 5x cheaper.

I had planned to get an internal LTO8 drive and then use an USB/SATA cable to connect it to a laptop. The Thunderbolt versions are very expensive.
Thoughts? I am a Tape n00b.
Andreas
 
I find the Type M procedure very confusing and for now am just using LTO-7 cartridges in my LTO-8 drive as 6TB cartridges. When the LTO-8 cartridges are available again, I'll jump back then. I'm using the Imagine software which works very well.
 
LTO 7 Type M indeed is confusing.
"Can I initialize Type M media in a standalone drive?
Answer: No, HPE does not initialize Type M media in standalone drives. LTO-7 Type M cartridges must be initialized in a library that supports
LTO-7 Type M. "

So you need one of those robotic libraries to make it work?
 
AndreasOberg said:
LTO 7 Type M indeed is confusing.
"Can I initialize Type M media in a standalone drive?
Answer: No, HPE does not initialize Type M media in standalone drives. LTO-7 Type M cartridges must be initialized in a library that supports
LTO-7 Type M. "

So you need one of those robotic libraries to make it work?
Click to expand...


That’s what I figured but I didn’t dive any further. The cheaper 6TB tapes are fine for now.
 
I read the Quantum drive and it seems to support making Type M (old name was M8).

https://iq.quantum.com/exLink.asp?10444458OP44N16I37407297&DS00457A&view=1

Also I am planning to bring this drive to different countries. And I see one interesting thing is that the internal is only 1.6kg while the external is 4.5kg. This makes a huge difference on airplanes.
I would think I can connect with an USB to SATA contact.
Has anyone transported these between countries?
/Andreas
 
AndreasOberg said:
As I understand the tapes are identical, just need to be formated differently.
Click to expand...

Yeah sorry I should have clarified the cheaper 6TB until the LTO-8 tapes get back to a reasonable price. I didn't find on my hardware/software how to format the LTO7 tapes to the M format.
 
What drive do you have Bob?
As I understand not all can format the LTO7 in Type M mode. I think Quantums drive can according to its specification.
The reason they can fit 9TB instead of 6 is because the LTO headers can write with more detail than the LTO7 drives could do. So even though the tapes are the same, the drives can read and write it differently. I will have to call some backup places to ask for advice.

/Andreas
 
After doing some more research it seems like the mLogic is the only LTO drive you can use with a laptop since it has TB3, while the rest has SATA.
Expensive and quite heavy are the downsides with the mLogic.

/Andreas
 
That one looks good Bob. Probably too big for me though since I'm considering to bring it along on shots.
Have you ever taken it on shots?
Basically we could be away for month and collect a huge amount of data. My plan was to have the data in 3 places. One spinning disks and 2 on tape.
Pity the drives are so heavy. That was a good thing with the internal drives that they are only 1.6kg, but if it is SAS connection it seems nearly impossible to use with a laptop.

Cheers,
Andreas
 
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