What's the best software to use to archive files on LTO4 tapes?

[Thatretroaussie]

I've got an old workstation pc (Dell PowerEdge t410) that has an LTO4 tape drive reader installed and, I want to use it with an internal raid configuration it has.

What I want to do is use it to archive data from the raid drives so that I could upgrade raid configuration then, migrate the data from the tapes back to the pc.

 

Now I think it's possible to do such a thing but, the main question is what's the best software to use?
I can use the bios to upgrade the raid configuration but, I don't have a clue what the best program to manage LTO4 tapes are.

If anyone could give me a hand with this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[mariushm]

Did you check the Downloads section of the company that made the LTO4 drive? Maybe there's some software there.

[Thatretroaussie]

3 hours ago, mariushm said:

Did you check the Downloads section of the company that made the LTO4 drive? Maybe there's some software there.

Well I checked the page and the only files it has are drivers and firmwares.
https://www.ibm.com/support/home/product/5364160/Tape_Drive_/_LTO_4
 

The drive works, Im just wondering what the best program is to use it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Did you try tar?

 

What os are you running?

 

[Thatretroaussie]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Did you try tar?

 

What os are you running?

 

Right now, it's running windows 7, If that helps.

[alpha754293]

On 1/17/2020 at 4:10 PM, Thatretroaussie said:

Right now, it's running windows 7, If that helps.

Oh. If you're running Windows, then your options are rather limited, and costly.

 

I think the one Windows application that I was originally looking at was the Datastor shield. But again, bear in mind, it's going to be expensive to get it.

 

(There isn't a lot of software that is used with Windows in order operate LTO tape drives. YoYotta can be used on Macs to operate LTO tape drives.)

 

For my external MagStor LTO-8 tape drive, I'm currently actually using CAE Linux 2018 (which is built off of Xubuntu 16.04 LTS) to run/drive/operate my LTO-8 tape drive.

 

I have an Atto ExpressSAS H680 PCIe 2.0 x8 SAS card that is used to run the drive, and then I just downloaded the LTFS software, installed it on my system, and now I can write data to it directly (because the drive itself supports LTFS) using Xubuntu's file manager. (I can just drag-and-drop data directly to the drive's mount point).

 

If you're using LTO-4 (which I don't think support LTFS), then your software cost is probably going to be even higher because your options are even more limited.

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.