Writing an LTFS LTO tape.

[Craigo5000]

Obviously retrospect 10.5 writes in it's own proprietary format but there is mention of LTFS support. Can anyone explain exactly what this entails? I've tried to read an LTFS formatted LTO5 tape made with my Xendata set-up and Retrospect ID's the tape as "unsupported" so you can't gain access to the contents.

 

Is it possible create an LTFS formatted LTO tape out of Retrospect from it's own proprietary format?

 

I'm trying to evaluate how good this Retrospect "LTFS support" is but if it can't read an LTFS tape or make one, then what is exactly the deal?

 

Thanks

[jotrago]

LTFS is a driver which uses an LTO5 or later drive and presents it as a disk  to the OS, just as your Xendata system does.

 

This item indicates that you can use an LTFS Disk Target with the Duplicate function, which simply copies files, in their original format to another disk location.

 

In this post, Mayoff indicates you should NOT use LTFS as a Retrospect Disk Target Device due to the way Retrospect writes its Backupsets, allowing for deduplication etc.

 

http://forums.retrospect.com/index.php?/topic/147996-retrospect-and-ltfs/

 

Alternatively I believe the Xendata system can present the LTFS file system as a NAS Share on the network. You may also be able to use that as a target for Duplication.

[Craigo5000]

Thanks for the detailed response. I'll do some testing.

[jotrago]

I see one of the links didn't come through in my first post

 

 

This item indicates that you can use an LTFS Disk Target with the Duplicate function, which simply copies files, in their original format to another disk location.

Was referring to this link

 

http://www.retrospect.com/en/blog/2014/01/19/tape_device_updates

 

LTFS was originally developed by IBM, who released their Driver as Open Source, it is still available on their site if you want to experiment. It has since been taken up by most other LTO manufacturers and tape based storage companies, and there are now many products based on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape_File_System

[AmandaRice]

I have some information here that may help you. Just browse on this link: 

http://www.storagedna.com/media/documents/StorageDNA_whitepaper_Facts-about-LTO-LTFS_web.pdf

This be a good reference upon writing an LTFS LTO tape. 

 

. 

[DavidHertzberg]

Guess what's in Retrospect Windows v12; see here on page 8.

[DavidHertzberg]

Oops, according to this Knowledge Base article the LTFS support is only for Copy/Duplicate; it does not support Backup or Archive scripts.  I'm not sure this is actually an improvement on what was available previously in Retrospect for LTFS—see the last paragraph.   And JoTraGo discusses what was available previously in post #2 in this very thread.  The link to the Retrospect Blog article in my second sentence of this post is actually from post #4; JoTraGo meant to include that link as well in post #2, but it "didn't come through".