New Potential LTFS Data Loss Situation Disclosed

[Tim Jones]

Hi Folks,

We've just received notice from the LTO vendors and verified in our labs that there is a potential data loss situation if you are writing LTO-5 LTFS tapes in an LTO-6 drive. If you fill the LTO-5 tape, you can be left with a tape that will not properly unmount / eject and may not be recoverable for remounting afterwards - even when using the "ltfsck deepscan" option. This affects LTFS operations under OS X, Windows, and Linux. You may see an error in your system logs that looks like this:

LTFS11033E cannot unmount: failed to write an index.

If you are writing to LTO-5 tapes in an LTO-6 drive, it is recommended that you leave a minimum of 20GB of free space on the tape to insure that the unmount properly updates the index data on the index partition.

If you are writing LTO-5 LTFS tapes in an LTO-5 drive, this does not affect your tape use.

While we have tested with the HP variants, we have no reason to believe that this doesn't also affect IBM drives.

This does not affect tapes written using BRU or TAR formats.

 

[Brian Timmons]

Long live BRU.
No I don't know Tim but I thank him and Tolis.
Been backing up footage throughout the last 3 days (and now) with BRU.
Have over 5 years of archives that have saved a few people's asses including my own.
BRU is something that would be hard to live without, particularly on the Mac.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Scott Pultz]

Can't wait for that Windows version of Bru to come out...

 

[Dave Blackham]

I agree, if your unfortunate enough to have to use Windows you would certainly need a very good back up system.

 

[Tim Jones]

re: BRU for Windows - The good news is that we're setting the BETA schedule so that we're close if not done by NAB next month.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

I always stick to a nice conservative 1.3T on LTO 5 and 2.6T on LTO 6 - ZERO issues. And MUCH faster and easier than BRU to find and retrieve a single file, etc. - but I always use 5 in 5 drive 6 in 6 drive. Good info to have out there Tim.

LTFS on LTO-6 rocks.

 

[Trevor Meier]

Mark, do you use any form of archival software? EG to be able to search for which tape a particular file may be loaded on?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't own too many LTO-5 tapes. Tons of LTO-4 and now using LTO-6. So, dodged that bullet. But yeah, LTFS on LTO-6 is pretty nice. Biggest advantage for me is that I can give a LTFS tape to someone and I don't have to worry about them having the right software.

 

[Scott Pultz]

I don't own too many LTO-5 tapes. Tons of LTO-4 and now using LTO-6. So, dodged that bullet. But yeah, LTFS on LTO-6 is pretty nice. Biggest advantage for me is that I can give a LTFS tape to someone and I don't have to worry about them having the right software.

How much storage are you getting on your tapes? Sometimes I get close to 2.5TB and sometimes it is 2TB. I don't know if the issue is the number of files (CinemaDNG has a lot of files) and index overhead, a problem with the tape, or something else.