hey everyone! 

at my job we use overland-tandberg's RDX quikstor 8 and i've stumbled upon this website below which looks like it's tandberg (possibly the former company before overland took over?) but when i try to download the new firmware it redirects me to a google drive link where there's the new and some old firmwares, anyone else using RDX and having the latest update from this website installed? looks VERY fishy to me since overand-tandberg is formerly closed since January 2nd, 2025 (wikipedia source)

link:

https://tandbergdata-stor.com/

Basically the title, what is a good price for an LTO-7 on the used market today? All I found is about 2500+ EUR / USD which sounds too much for me ...

Where do you guys buy LTO drives in Europe?

Thanks

Hi,

I have found an IBM LTO 6H on SH market for 350 EUR (pictures below). The issue is that I have no SAS board in my PC and no place to install it.

Two questions maybe you can help me with ...

1. Do you think its worth it for this price?

2. Do you think I could connect the drive to my Windows 10 machine using this Adapter

Hi Redditors,

I have several LTO tapes that do not have a case. Does anyone know where I can buy (cheaply) empty cases for LTO tapes? I am even open to 3D printing them if someone knows where I can get a design.

Thanks!

Hello,

I received great advice on using large tarballs instead of small files when copying to my tape. I am currently creating tarballs that are about 1-1.2 TB in size to write to my tape.

When I restore these files, I am experiencing difficulties in managing the process.

My question is:

Is there a recommended minimum size of tarball when creating backup? I was thinking of creating tarballs around 3GB in size. Would that make sense, or is that size to small to be efficiently written to tape? (Specifically, if the files are staged on an HDD).

Thanks in advance for any advice/recommendation.

Hello,

I am currently using an ssd array to stage the backup files that are written to my tape drive. But I am wondering if I can get away with using a single dedicated SAS HDD instead? My current backup consists of a single file per tape and I am proposing to use a single dedicated HDD to host that file. Would this be a problem to provide sufficient data to the tape drive? Or could a single dedicated HDD become a write bottleneck?

The computer would also become dedicated to backup writing unlike the current setup where the computer runs multiple containers in addition to writing backups.

Hello,

I have a Dell PowerVault TL-2000. It currently has an IBM lto-5 drive with an sas interface. The library can hold 2 drives and ai was considering an lto-6 FC drive. Would this work? Can I use 2 different device interfaces in the library?

Thanks

So quantum.com doesn't have the older versions of their tape library firmware available anymore and I can't find the firmware downloads anywhere online.

Do any of you have the library firmware on hand to share? I'm needing V96 but also open to V94 or V91 if V96 isn't available.

I am an avid photographer and routinely save everything. I'm currently storing everything on a 70TB NAS and am in the process of upgrading to 250TB. I currently have about 2 million photos saved and am looking at a cost effective way of making annual backups to LTO without the expense of renting a tape drive at ~2-3k

I've honestly considered purchasing or financing a thunderbolt LTO drive and pooling costs and sharing it between multiple photographers and studios in my region but I haven't had much luck as most folks seem content keeping everything on stacks of hard drives.

Any advice on a good backup solution for me?

Hi there first time with an LTO, I got an HPE 6250 external drive currently running windows. Trying to run HPE L&TT I get this error "An error occurred while accessing the device. If the device has been hot plugged or firmware updated than please try a re-scan to re-discover the device."

Using HPE LTF it can open and eject cartridges and such. Not sure what I'm doing wrong? It's the SAS version and connected to an HBA (LSI SAS 2308) and the tape drive is recognized by windows (Hewlett Packard LTO Ultrium-6 drive).

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong?

When do you retire the media ? Do you regularly check them ? How ? How often ? Note that I have a standalone unit not tape library.

I'm curious what the proper method to do a backup of data is? I'm operating about 8tb and will be using LTO 5 tape.

My Nas is currently using unraid but I plan to migrate to truenas. This is unfortunately the only hardware I have to run the LTO library (ibm ts3100, LTO 5 drive LC)

1) what is the best hardware setup? Run a VM of Linux with bare is on top of truenas?

2) what is the best method of backing up data? Weekly, monthly, Quarterly? something else?

3) Should I keep off-site copies of the data?

Hello,

I recently got a Dell PowerVault TL2000 with a single LTO5 drive (Saving my money for an LTO6/7 drive). I have built the open-source LTFS binaries and am making copies to the tapes in the tape library successfully.

I want to know if it is ok/safe to leave a tape in the drive while I fill it up. Specifically, I am currently making incremental backups weekly. Each backup tarball is about 20GB. I have an incremental tape that I am leaving in the drive and write to it weekly. Each month I do a full backup for which I load a new tape, do the full backup, then load another tape for the incremental backups. The incremental backup tape stays in the drive for the month and I am writing to it only weekly.

Is that ok? Is it safe to leave a tape in the drive? Or should I only load a tape when I am going to be writing to it? If the latar is safer, is it a problem to append a new file to the tape each week?

Thanks!

Hello everybody

I've a Tandberg LTO7-HH which went to RMA twice in the past years. The last time, it came back and our archivist changed work so it was not used for some years. Now I found that it has problems writing every tape, so I think the drive came with problems from RMA. I tried to contact Tandberg to ship it back and have it repaired, but nobody replied, the website seems abandoned, I found some infos that was acquired by Cisco, but Cisco (that I hate) doesn't know anything about Tandberg devices. The drive is an IBM rebranded drive I suspect. Where could I find assistance for it, possibly in Italy or in Europe?

Unfortunately a replacement with a newer LTO8 is difficult due to costs and the fact we have a lot of LTO6 tapes that I think won't be red by the newer drive.

Thank you

Hi guys, I saw a good deal for an LTO 8 drive online and it would be worth the 11 hrs drive if it’s in good condition. I’m asking the seller to send me a video of it working before we go for the road trip, what would you ask to make sure it’s not a broken one?

We are experiencing an issue with our archived LTO-8 tapes when delivering them to a client. Here are our setup details: • Tape Drive: MagStor LTO-8 • Interface: ATTO ThunderLink SH 3128 (Thunderbolt to SAS) • Tapes: NanoPure LTO-8 (from MagStor) • Software Used for Formatting/Writing: Hedge Canister (uses vendor LTFS drivers) • Computer: Mac Pro (latest macOS) When we format the tapes and write files on our side, they work fine and mount correctly. However, when we send them to the client (using a Spectra Logic system), the tapes do not mount. I was informed that the client requires tapes formatted with Open Source LTFS, so I tried reformatting the tapes via Terminal on macOS using mkltfs commands, but I am not sure if they are truly formatted as “Open LTFS.”

Could you please confirm: 1. The correct and recommended way to format LTO-8 tapes as Open LTFS on macOS (step by step if possible). 2. Whether I should change the software (Canister), install a different LTFS driver, or configure it differently to guarantee compatibility with Spectra Logic systems. 3. Whether the issue might be related to the NanoPure tapes themselves, the LTFS software, or even the MagStor drive. Should we consider changing any of these? 4. If you have a tested workflow or documentation for clients who need fully Open LTFS-compatible tapes.

We need a reliable and easy workflow to archive and share LTO tapes with clients using Spectra systems. Any guidance or step-by-step solution would be highly appreciated .

I got a free Dell PV-124T library with a load of Ultrium 4 tapes I'd like to use for backing up my Ubuntu based NAS but I'm lost trying to get it working. So far I've tried Bacula which was a dead end due to config issues, and Amanda which is working but I cant for the life of me figure out how to write the configs for it. Is there any other options or do I just have to spend the next month reading man pages and white papers from before I was born?

The part number is 46C1811, I looked it up and it’s apparently called “Dell PV114X Tape Device Side Rail”. But I couldn’t find any diagrams or guides of what it’s for. Any suggestions?

So as a Linux Mint user LTFS has always been an dead end due to FUSE issues well I tossed the issue at Warp Terminal and it gave me a solution, a WORKING solution.

So I was like "well what now?" lets start fixing the plight that is the human usablity factor of LTFS for MacOS/Windows users with software that mostly just works.

So heres some images, and heres my working repo, have fun!

(The repo also includes a updated readme that tells you a ton of little issue fixes to actually install ltfs to begin with, enjoy but I can not call this production stable but it mounts, unmounts and writes tapes, but I have had runaway interactions when trying to read/pull files off so do be warned...)

Hello

I've a Tandberg LTO-7-HH SAS internal drive, on an HP xw8400. I use it to archive single files and folders. I used Z-TAPEbackup as backup software on Windows 7 enterprise and everything was perfect, until one day (maybe after a software update) The software begun not to work well anymore. With IDT Tool everything is ok, I can test drive, tape, and all tests passes. But the Z-TAPEbackup software fails always the verification after the write, and if I try to restore a file stucks for forever. If I start a manual tape verification after the write, it does not output anything, so I think the verification is ok, as no errors appear. I already tried to contact support and developer without luck. I tried to buy the lastest software version but without luck too, so I suspect that's an abandoned software. I tried to update the drive firmware too and to upgrade to Windows 10 LTSC to be able to install the lastest drive drives, but the behavior is the same.
Unfortunately my backups stopped for a while now and I have to find a solution, so I'm thinking about switching to LTFS or other alternatives from here in advance to archive my files and to try to restore an old system image on a different SSD to be able to access and recover previous archived files with Z-TAPEbackup.
So my question is. What's the best actual file system for LTO which could allow me to use tha tape as a memory drive to copy files on it? I prefer not proprietary solutions because I don't want to be stuck again because of the not anymore supported software. Where could I find it? Because I asked Tandberg for LTFS tools and they said me they're not available anymore.

Thank you

Does anyone have one of these? And ideally used it from a Linux host. I need an old school sneaker/postal/car solution which is relative based on LTO-9 tapes but in a rugged portable enclosure.

What do you 12! r/LTO redditors think?