19 votes
Accepted

What does it mean, if all LEDs of an LTO-6 drive are flashing?

I googled a few examples of LTO-6 tape drives, and they all seem to have basically the same LEDs, although their arrangement varies by OEM and form factor: encryption cleaning required tape (error) ...
telcoM's user avatar
  • 4,588
6 votes
Accepted

HP Ultrium 1840 LTO-4 slow write speeds

You don’t have differential cabling so HBA is switching into UltraWide mode. Get proper cable in between your HBA and SCSI device. https://ask.adaptec.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11007/~/scsi-...
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar
5 votes

What does it mean, if all LEDs of an LTO-6 drive are flashing?

Assuming its a HP drive... Its broken. Considering you can't insert a tape... call for service
Journeyman Geek's user avatar
4 votes

Device busy when reading from tape drive with tar

Did you also write with the same block size? Did you rewind beforereading? Does mt -f /dev/nst0 status work? Are you chaining dd with tar or just using tar as you wrote? There is a quirk when using ...
NickSoft's user avatar
  • 288
4 votes
Accepted

Which SAS cable to connect an internal HP LTO-5 tape drive?

Internal SAS drives usually have SFF-8482 connectors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI#Connectors
Zac67's user avatar
  • 11.5k
4 votes
Accepted

Can SAS Tape Drive (HP StoreEver 6250) used with LSI SAS 9200-8e-HP?

Both are older 6 Gb/s SAS, both come from the same vendor (HP). https://www.storagereview.com/review/hp-storeever-lto-6-ultrium-6250-review-eh970a https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/12352378 I believe you’...
El Marinero 's user avatar
4 votes

Magnetic tape alternative

Not having business requirements is a big red flag - so I strongly suggest to understand what is required before investing in any solution. That said, to save large amount of off-site data I can ...
shodanshok's user avatar
  • 50.4k
3 votes
Accepted

Can I connect HP Ultrium 1760 drive to LSI Logic SAS 3041E controller using the cable on the picture

Yes - actually both variants would do. SFF-8482 is the standard internal SAS device interface. I'd prefer the adapter cable since it doesn't introduce additional connections. Watch out for the power ...
Zac67's user avatar
  • 11.5k
3 votes

What are the IOPS and physical block size for modern magnetic tapes?

Physical tape is a sequential medium, so forget about (random access) IOPS. I've got some 90 seconds maximum rewind time in my head for LTO. Translated to 45 seconds mean access time, you'd get .02 ...
Zac67's user avatar
  • 11.5k
3 votes

LTO-4 Tape Write Source Throughput Needs

The mbuffer is a small and handy tool which can help you to maintain sustained data flow to the tape drive. It’s available on most linux distributions. mbuffer - buffers I/O operations and ...
Andi's user avatar
  • 171
3 votes

Quantum Scalar i80 - I see the tape drive, but not changer

I know this is an ancient post , but the changer will be accessed by an 'sg' device , ie scsi generic. If you are running Linux , it will already have sg support. sg provides a lower level interface ...
J R Spigot's user avatar
3 votes

Fibre channel: LTO tape overwritten on bus reset

This is a known problem with tape drives, and the way that they are trivially-easy to rewind merely by looking sideways at the device (ie, opening it in the wrong way - via the rewinding device - just ...
MadHatter's user avatar
  • 80.5k
2 votes

How can I discover the content of a non-descript LTO3?

I would just dd the first say 8k to a file dd if=/dev/nst0 of=file.dat bs=8k count=1, then use file, or strings, or hexdump, or od, or something to examine the contents. Perhaps there is some header ...
lsd's user avatar
  • 1,693
2 votes

Moving data to tape

To display status of the tape/drive use: mt status #Use default mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status #Unix mt -f /dev/st0 status #Linux mt -f /dev/nsa0 status #FreeBSD mt -f /dev/rmt/1 status #Unix unity 1 i....
Joshua Turnwell's user avatar
2 votes

Magnetic tape alternative

First, figure out the rough amount of data you'd need to transfer, and compare it to the network bandwidth available on-site. If you find you'd need to get a new fiberoptic line into a site that's &...
telcoM's user avatar
  • 4,588
1 vote

Magnetic tape alternative

When your main concern is the valuable time you spent driving - consider simply out-sourcing the task of changing the tapes. Most datacenters offer a remote hands service for what is probably not ...
Rob's user avatar
  • 1,193
1 vote

Maximum write speed of HP Ultrium 1760 drive

SAS runs at least 3 Gbit/s = 300 MB/s goodput. The drive is rated at 120 MB/s max (240 MB/s w/ 2:1 compression), so adding the second lane doesn't do anything. Your SAS HBA uses SATA-style ports but ...
Zac67's user avatar
  • 11.5k
1 vote

Fibre Channel Ports and Tape Library

I had performance problems with an IBM TS3100 a while ago. My troubleshooting log from that contains the following: The tape drive needed to be set to N-port mode. The tape drive had an 8Gbps FC ...
Mikael H's user avatar
  • 5,089
1 vote

Fiber tape changer missing on lsscsi

I just found out that, on the Library Type configuration on the TL are two options: Random and Sequential. I've changed it to sequential, thinking that it was going to force the Library to use the ...
Brosig's user avatar
  • 111
1 vote

LTO-4 Tape Write Source Throughput Needs

The manual I've found lists variable speeds from 30.5 to 120 MB/s in ~7 MB/s increments. Additionally, LTO drives use reasonably sized buffers to equalize the data stream and provide an indicator for ...
Zac67's user avatar
  • 11.5k
1 vote
Accepted

bareos Using both tape drives (not multiplexing)

From the BareOS documentation: As a default, Bareos jobs will prefer to write to a Volume that is already mounted. If you have a multiple drive autochanger and you want Bareos to write to more ...
wazoox's user avatar
  • 6,998
1 vote

8mm Data8 tape drive compatibility for Maxell HS-8/112 and 3M D8-112

if you have just used an MP tape in the drive , the drive will reject the AME tape. You can reset this by putting a cleaning cartridge through. Stupid idea , but there you are. The drive reads MP ...
J R Spigot's user avatar
1 vote

Link between tape drive library index and its serial number on linux

Not possible. I've last looked at this in 2008, but there was no such universal method. Generally SCSI protocol (+descendants) for a tape library lacked at the time the possibility to ask a tape ...
kubanczyk's user avatar
  • 14k
1 vote

Quantum LTO-4 Drive fails with new tapes and need to be cleaned too often

Replacing the tapes was probably a bad idea. Back in the days where I was administrating LTO-4 drives it was entirely normal for brand new tapes to be covered in a tiny amount of debris left over from ...
kasperd's user avatar
  • 30.7k
1 vote

Simple backup tape wiping, from linux shell?

If you want every bit of data scrubbed from the drive, mt erase (long erasure) is the way to go. If you can accept the minimal risk of someone with specialized hardware reading your tapes, a short ...
Ricky's user avatar
  • 232
1 vote

Is there a version of mt for windows, or something similar?

I also needed a reliable mt on Windows 10. The most reliable I found is Hamilton C shell's mt version. They offer a full working demo version. If one wish to run mt.exe independently, then license ...
gsl's user avatar
  • 143

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible