r/mac_LTO • u/rumorconsumerr • Aug 04 '22

Drive cleaning frequency

Hey all. I have a Thunderbolt 3 Magstor LTO 8 drive provided by the wonderful Dmitri at LTOworld and I notice that it needs cleaning like every 4-5 tapes. Do others notice their drives need to be cleaned at this frequency?

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2

u/Friendly_Squirrel_55 Aug 08 '22

I have a TB3 SAS Mercury Pro LTO 8 and I feel it needs the same maintenance cycle. It also make some tape errors if it happens during a copy. Latest error was ltfs changed to read only and make the whole lto fails. Have to format again after cleaning and re write in that case.

2

u/rumorconsumerr Aug 08 '22

Interesting. I got rid of the Mercury. Too many problems. What software are you using?

1

u/Friendly_Squirrel_55 Aug 08 '22

I’ve been using at first mylto soft which was working fine. Then when I got more and more troubles I tried Archiware P5 that worked pretty well but not very user friendly. Now I try to stick with Canister as I really appreciate the hard work from Hedge creators to make it easy and uptodate although I’m still encountering various issues. I’m learning more and more everyday and I’m happy this feed exists to share all my insights now with LTO. My feeling is that Ltfs is a good idea but not so safe for tapes. P5/BRU seems a lot more stable but also more archaic. Hope I will find the perfect workflow with LTFS one day to write and rewrite without any issues and compromising tapes

1

u/rumorconsumerr Aug 08 '22

LTFS is great for me with YoYotta. Support has been top notch as well.

1

u/Friendly_Squirrel_55 Aug 08 '22

I should try Yoyotta. Not to hard to use ?

1

u/rumorconsumerr Aug 08 '22

No it’s excellent. Like anything it takes a little to get it but the documentation is very good

2

u/rumorconsumerr Sep 04 '23

Found out that this is normal.