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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

LTO8 Media Shortage

Read up a bit more mLogic apparently supports formating LTO Type M, so the 9TB version
"Able to format new, unused LTO 7 tapes as Type M-8 media. This allows the use of LTO 7 tapes in an LTO 8 Drive and increases the normal capacity of an LTO 7 tape by 50%, up to 22.5TB compressed."

The TB to SAS converts are qutie heavy at 1.5kg so probably no point for me to use.
An extra problem is I have a PC, always tricky to get Thunderbolt to work. My supermicro motherboard is supposed to support it, but I could never get it to work (did not try that much though).

Andreas
 
AndreasOberg said:
Read up a bit more mLogic apparently supports formating LTO Type M, so the 9TB version
"Able to format new, unused LTO 7 tapes as Type M-8 media. This allows the use of LTO 7 tapes in an LTO 8 Drive and increases the normal capacity of an LTO 7 tape by 50%, up to 22.5TB compressed."

The TB to SAS converts are qutie heavy at 1.5kg so probably no point for me to use.
An extra problem is I have a PC, always tricky to get Thunderbolt to work. My supermicro motherboard is supposed to support it, but I could never get it to work (did not try that much though).

Andreas
Click to expand...


Why not a USB3 version?

https://magstor.com/collections/uni...x-lt80h-lto8-usb-3-0-ltfs-tabletop-tape-drive
 
Hi

I know that the type M thing is confusing. My understanding is that it allows for 9TB on a LTO7 tape written in a LTO8 drive with no promise of forwards or backwards compatibility. So here is my stance.

For tapes that are going externally, we are writing only LTO7 standard tapes. They are labeled as L7 and can be read in any LTO7 or LTO8 drive.

Our our own archives, we are initializing as Type M. Why you ask, because it drives my archival cost down 33%. And since these are just internal, and properly labeled with a M8 barcode, I don't see the downside. Will I need to make sure I have a LTO8 drive around for the foreseeable future, why yes. But this LTO8 purchase was a 5-7 year purchase and migration. And everything sitting on LTO tapes for us is also sitting on our cold storage server that has about 256TB of parity safe storage.

End result, 62TB of raw R3D from a documentary sits on 7 tapes rather than 11. Saving me 4 tapes.
 
Hi Matthew, that is interesting to know.
Yes, LTO7 Type M allowes 9TB on the same 6TB tapes. The reason, and this is interesting, is that the new LTO8 drives can write with a higher density. So even though the tapes are the same, because of the increased resolution of the drive we get 50% more space.
I have done some more research and it seems that the mLogic drive can write Type M (I asked their tech support). They said that it depends on the software if it can write in this mode. 50% more storage is a considerable improvement so would be great to use it if it is indeed possible.
What software do you use for your backups?

Best wishes,
Andreas
 
Bob, the USB version is pretty clever, but it seems to be a lot slower. 140MB/s while the TB are supposed to be able to write in 300MB/S. Not sure why USB cannot handle 300MB/s, should be fine.
 
Also did some digging on the LTO-7M and found you shouldn't use it on a standalone drive though. It should only be used in a barcode library environment.
If you insert an lto7 m8 formatted tape into an lto7 drive on accident it will corrupt your tape.
 
Yikes! Where did you get this information Bob. Pretty scary.
I'm just working here on testing if I can get thunderbolt up and running on my PC. It has a specific card for thunderbolt but I seem to miss a cable to connect it to the motherboard.
/Andreas
 
AndreasOberg said:
Yikes! Where did you get this information Bob. Pretty scary.
I'm just working here on testing if I can get thunderbolt up and running on my PC. It has a specific card for thunderbolt but I seem to miss a cable to connect it to the motherboard.
/Andreas
Click to expand...

Tim from Magstor gave me this info today. I'm going to avoid LTO-7M until LTO-8 tapes are readily available.
 
YoYottaID is great. Very happy with the software and allows for Type M Initialization.

I agree that Type M is not a good case for when outside parties are around, but all my tapes are properly barcoded M8 and we do not have a LTO7 deck around. Myself nd only one other person in our company are doing backups. And these are for cold storage. Ice Cold. I am 100% ok with my choice, knowing that I have taken the correct steps to prevent future disaster.

Also, you can insert a M8 tape in a LTO7 Drive. It doesn't corrupt it. Just won't read it. Just like if you stuck a LTO8 tape in a LT7 drive.
 
Good to know Matthew. YoYotta seems great, pity we use mainly PCs.
When you write the tapes what drive do you have? Is it an external one or the bigger library systems.
Andreas
 
Hi Andreas

I have a Thunderbolt2 M-Logic One. I had issues with it. Sent t back but my replacement has been fine. M-Logic Support leaves something to be desired.
 
Matthew Riggieri said:
Hi Andreas

I have a Thunderbolt2 M-Logic One. I had issues with it. Sent t back but my replacement has been fine. M-Logic Support leaves something to be desired.
Click to expand...

Honestly why I went with Magstor. M-Logic is impossible to get a hold of.
 
Hey guys,

I've been on vacation, but am back now. Just to clear some things up about the LTO7 M8 format and tape drives in general.

LTO7 M8 9TB formatted cartridges are only going to work in an LTO8 drive, and IBM has made it clear that LTO9 is probably not going to work with LTO7 M8 tapes. If you insert an LTO7 M8 tape into an LTO7 drive on accident, then you're going to be sorry. You need to keep in mind that someone 10 years down the road looks at the tape and sees it says LTO7, then thinks they need an LTO7 drive to run it. Tape libraries have barcode scanners that will identify the tape (if the barcode is properly set to M8) and only insert it into an LTO8 drive.

While you CAN use M8 on a standalone drive by formatting it with appropriate LTFS software, it just isn't recommended due to the risks and non-compatibility issues. All drives can format M8 it's just dependent on the software such as YoYotta etc.

Regarding the internal drives vs external drives mentioned. An internal drive would require a power source and cooling, so you can't just take it around and plug it into your laptop with a converter.

Unitex USB LTO tape drives actually run at up to 240 MB/s, not 140. Thunderbolt can do 300 MB/s, which is the same as the native SAS speeds on tape drives, but in reality you don't see a full 300+ too often in real life anyway unless your conditions are extremely ideal. For example you'd need a big Thunderbolt RAID or SSDs to transfer at 300 MB/s and also be using large consistent files so the drive doesn't have to stop and make an LTFS marker between a ton of small files. I know it's a turn off saying that 240 MB/s isn't the full capability of the drive but it's rarely an issue in reality.

Thunderbolt to SAS adapters do work in some cases but are not all created equally, nor do they have tape drives specifically in mind when being engineered. Normally the hardware vendors between each one will point fingers at each other when you have a problem and you know how that ends up - lots of bickering between vendors and the end user is caught up in the crossfire wasting time and not getting anything resolved.

MagStor's parent company, Magnext, distributes and supports the MagStor and Unitex product lines. Magnext has been in the business of tape drive repair and emergency logistics serving end users and maintenance companies since 2005 with very strict SLAs. MagStor was actually featured on Linus Tech Tips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alxqpbSZorA
 
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