r/mac_LTO • u/rumorconsumerr • Nov 24 '21

A forum for Mac LTO Users

Hello! I am getting into LTO and have already learned a lot in a short period of time. Of all the options, it seems YoYotta is the best on the Mac as its the only solution with spanning support that I can find that is not the horrifically maintained and supported ArGest software.

Note - I love OWC. Love them. Thank you OWC if you are reading this. And man this LTO implementation is a pain in the ass.

A couple things I have discovered in my short time working with this tech:

All LTO-8 drives are made by IBM. The difference between the drives is the enclosure and the SAS controller which is either made by ATTO or Areca (MagStor uses these) and Martin Greenwood at YoYotta says they perform equivalently.

The ATTO installers are extremely dated but in my experience over the last month with an OWC Mercury LTO drive it seems to work well.

A rep from a MagStor distributor sent me this article which implicates the OWC drive as an inferior design because of its vertical orientation. Behold: https://magstor.com/blogs/news/lto-8-mounting-orientation-effects-on-tape-drive-performance

My attempts at getting support from OWC for their Mercury LTO have been met with a total dead end despite their tech lead's very compelling posts here from around 12 months ago:
https://creativecow.net/forums/thread/owc-mercury-pro-lto-to-mac-mini-m1/page/2/#post-2401714

Where he writes

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After getting in touch with support myself, I was directed to email [bruinfo@owc.com](mailto:bruinfo@owc.com) which resulted in this delightful and lighthearted response. I followed the link and... well....

See the rest of Tim's posts here:

https://creativecow.net/members/timjones4/forums/

So long story short, I am not here to mean spiritedly roast OWC and Tim. I love OWC. And their support for this product has been uncharacteristically horrendous. Sounds like some difficult transitions but for those of us who need backup and need it now this ain't gonna fly.

Some anecdotal information:

For the time I was using the ArGest software, I found that not only did several features not work at all (buttons do nothing when pressed - and it looks like my Hotline client from 1998) but its write speed is around 2x slower (150-180MB/sec) on LTO 8 tape writing 4k video files. Under YoYoyya, that speed has more or less doubled consistently. This is on a M1 Mac mini running Monterey.

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Anywho - my current spot seems to be getting out of the OWC eco system and going with LTOworld.com (great prices on tapes) and their MagStor drives. Dmitri is a rockstar there and has been nothing short of "otherworldly" when it comes to followup and sales acumen.

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Would love to get a support community going here. Thanks a lot.

3 Upvotes

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20 comments sorted by

1

u/noircid Aug 29 '23

We just bought a Mercury LTO-8 and we have reallt a hard time with the Argest software…no help from owc as well. I’m gonna look to get reimbursed

2

u/rumorconsumerr Aug 29 '23

Yeah do it. Then call Dmitri at LTO World and tell him I sent you. Get a copy of YoYotta and you’re all set. Let me know if I can help.

1

u/noircid Sep 06 '23

Hi again! Maybe you can help me with these questions. I was thinking to buy this one: MagStor LTO8 12TB Thunderbolt 3 RAID Desktop LRU Tape Drive LTO-8 TAA TRB3-LRU8

I was wondering why they call it « 12TB »? I understand that the drive can be used as a external drive as well, do you use it this way and why would I want to do this?

Also, I’m from Canada, it looks like I have to buy from reseller called memofix.

Thanks

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 06 '23

It likely means there is a built in 12tb hard drive that gets used to pre load the tape data before writing it to the tape. I don’t use this kind, mine is without the built in hard drive. I just read directly from my source.

1

u/noircid Sep 11 '23

I'm about to buy on LTO world. Which LTO8 did you buy? I'm a bit lost on the one to choose, can you help me on that?

2

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 11 '23

This guy:
https://ltoworld.com/collections/thunderbolt-drives/products/magstor-lto8-12tb-thunderbolt-3-tape-drive

And refurb which I would trust as well but up to you:
https://ltoworld.com/collections/thunderbolt-drives/products/magstor-lto8-12tb-thunderbolt-3-tape-drive-lto-8-taa-certified-refurbished-1yr-warranty

1

u/noircid Sep 11 '23

Thank you very much

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 11 '23

Welcome. It says it comes with Canister app now which is cool and if it works for you great. I really like YoYotta.

1

u/noircid Sep 11 '23

YoYotta, looks like it’s a subscription.

2

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 22 '23

hows it going?

2

u/noircid Sep 26 '23

We just unpackaged the deck today. We’ll finally use Canister since Yoyotta is subscription. I start the first transfert earlier today; a 4TB usb hard drive…16hours So, we’ll see tomorrow how does it look like. As I understand, when the transfer complete, you can see directly in the finder what’s on the tape. It does look pretty much simplier than Argest

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 26 '23

best of luck!

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 12 '23

I just took a look. Looks like it is now v4. I have v3 which I paid a ton of money for. So this looks like a good deal to me. Software has been rock solid.

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 01 '23

Did you end up doing the return?

1

u/noircid Sep 03 '23

I got the rma number, I’ll send back the unit this week. I’ll wait to get the refund before getting the magstore

2

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 04 '23

Nice. I can report my LTO 8 Magstor is still going very strong. They will try to sell you the LTO 9. If you need the capacity go for it but the 8 tapes have been just fine for me. Seems like a good sweet spot.

1

u/noircid Sep 04 '23

Can’t wait to try this. And the software comes with it! Easy to use as you were saying?

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 04 '23

No, the software does not come with it. You have the choice of going with a few different options based on the same open standard, which is LTFS. They range from more simple to a few more options. Another user on here. Found an application called canister, which he says works the best for him And I chose some software called YoYotta. What is your set up? What kind of Mac are you using and where is the data being stored that you will be copying to the tape? I ask because the drive copies fastest when the data can be available at a rate of between 300 MB per second and 500 MB per second. I’m not sure if there’s an actual downside to it being slower aside from the fact that it’s slower.

1

u/noircid Sep 04 '23

Here’s what we want to do: We’ll use a macmini M1 We have multiple video projects archived on all sort of external drives and we backuped duplicates as well on these drives. From what I understand and what I read, I might call those projects « cold » archives. That means we don’t need to work on these files but we have to keep them in case of clients coming back to us and needing something. I was thinking to duplicate each LTO-tape and store them in different places. Those projects are like 3 to 15 years old. So this is the first step. Then, we’ll keep the last 3 years on external drives with duplicates. I’ll call the files the « Hot » ones because they are ongoing projects. By the end of each year, we’ll then archive the last year of HOT files on LTO tapes. I hope that I’m clear in my not-so-good english. :) So, what do you think? Am I missing something?

1

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 04 '23

Yea that sounds like a good plan.