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Is LTO tape still favored by the scanning companies or are they moving over to HDD or SDD?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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14 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Perry blocked you?? Does not sound like Perry. He usually has an argument for everything, if he does not agree. Either something is right or wrong or we don't know. There should not be any shame in searching for the truth. 

He doesn't think my opinions are valid, probably best to leave it at that.

14 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I settled on SanDisk G-Drive Pro. 22TB. But once it is reformatted to Windows it drops down to 20 TB. I've never met anyone that has a LTO drive other than hearing about them here. I've never found a custom computer maker that would add the LTO interface to run a LTO drive. OK, the custom makers specialize mainly in gaming computers... but if they can't do it, who can?

Two of my friends have them, and they're essential if you want to do archive work. For an individual like you or hobbyist the main advantage would be that you don't have to spin them up like hard drives, so a cheap used LTO-6 or LTO-5 drive might be an option, but at that point it's no longer cheaper than hard drives per terabyte it's just a more stable and safer storage medium. If you want to experiment just look for a cheap used drive under $300 or so, set it up and if you like it you can invest more in a higher spec drive.

14 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

IF...they were USB plug and play and IF they were half-ass affordable (LTO-8 = $1000) I go for it.

If you can buy an LTO-8 drive for $1,000 then that's an absolute bargain and you'll save money over hard drives in no time.

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Just ran across this workshop at an upcoming AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) conference in Pittsburgh... LTO for the Masses. 

That is what you need to run LTO...a workshop! Or maybe it just tells you some basic details and you need 2 more workshops on how to set up and run.

De-Mystifying LTO, or, LTO for the Masses

  • Linda Tadic, Digital Bedrock
  • Larry Blake, Swelltone
  • Reto Kromer, AV Preservation by reto.ch

LTO data tape is an economical and physically robust storage media option for archives with digital content. Its open file system, LTFS, is not reliant upon propriety software. As a result, it enables accessing individual files as if the they were on a hard drive.  LTO can be used with single desktop drives, in small changers, or in large-scale robotic systems. This session will de-mystify using LTO data tape for archival data storage. The panelists will review the storage technology, and provide considerations in using LTO: drives, software, hardware, workflow when migrating to newer LTO generations, and open-source tools. The core part of the session will outline the components in building a streamlined and portable LTO system that can be used by anyone.

 

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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On 11/11/2022 at 5:59 PM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

That is what you need to run LTO...a workshop! Or maybe it just tells you some basic details and you need 2 more workshops on how to set up and run.

This is a workshop designed for non-technical archivists who are thinking of using LTO (most likely in small archives where there may not be a large IT staff), at a conference where there are a bunch of like minded people already gathered together. You don't need a workshop to set one up, you need to read the manual. 

It took me about 20 minutes to get our first LTO drive up and running. It's simply not that big a deal. But if you don't have experience with it or you're not technical, this serves as an introduction. LTFS drivers make these trivially easy to use. Your tape literally shows up like a mounted hard drive and if you're on Windows (or presumably mac, I don't know since we use linux for our LTOs), it's drag-and-drop at the simplest level. 

More sophisticated software will do things like checksum all the files before copying, create a manifest of those checksums, and verify the data after copying. 

 

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