Tape Drive Storage from the 2000s - A Look Inside The IBM LTO2!

[@mikepartin571]

I spent several years back in the early 2000's repairing a lot of these, and various tape libraries (mostly dell at the time) at a hardware refurbisher. Lots of fun seeing the 'innards' again.

[@JazzyJane_uk]

I thought it would be interesting for others to see inside one. Thanks for watching and thanks for the sub.

[@yotest3697]

Having slow motion footage is brilliant

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Yes I thought so, as you can clearly see the tape moving into the mechanism and back out again, which was not so much fun at normal speed. Thanks for watching.

[@justoreyes1832]

It reminded me of the old VHS tapes...the inner mechanism is fascinating...all that charm has been lost with current technology...but an old 65-year-old technician is speaking...lol

[@wfkonynenberg5242]

@@justoreyes1832 tbh, VHS falls in the category of "newfangled stuff". Nothing like good old reel tape. :-)

[@saturn5tony]

Ohhh wow! I've been into computer tech all my life and never heard of the ibm lto series of storage. That was very cool, thank you so much for sharing jazze!

[@JazzyJane_uk]

I thought it would be interesting for others to see inside one.

[@saturn5tony]

@@JazzyJane_uk thar was very cool, ty 4 sharing

[@dlarge6502]

I've just started upgrading our tapes at work to LTO8. At home I archive to LTO4 and BD-R DL. At work I'm migrating the DDS/DAT archive tapes, as well as recovering data from the 90's that people ask for. Im moving the DDS tapes to LTO4 first as they are the oldest, then I'll start moving everything LTO1 and above up to LTO8. The DDS tapes go back to the 90's and besides a little bit of manual cleaning of the heads once in a while the tapes are great. As for running WinNT Backup, you can install Windows XP on a PCI express machine as long as you use SP3, SP2 just wouldn't boot. Then a PCI SCSI card will work, with the right drivers as long as you use a PCI express mother board with a PCI slot. A couple of years ago Asus certainly had some. My Ryzen 5 1600 system runs WinXP SP3 just fine with the SATA port's in AHCI mode. I already did similar at work, there I have an XP SP3 install running on a 4 core Xeon at 3GHz. It only has PCI express however but that's fine as I'm using USB DDS tape drives. Even though it's PCIe the Quadro GPU and latest 32 bit XP drivers from Nvidia work also. The machine, for WinXP is ridiculously overpowered 😂 Also NTBackup will run on Vista but you need to install the storage service manually. By win 7 NTBackup is totally non-functional for tape access but will work fine if opening the BKF files from other media. Symantec Backup Exec and NTBackup use exactly the same format thus will read each others data, so my Win2022 server at work will read NT Backup tapes with the latest Backup exec. There is a tool for Linux that will dump the BKF files off a tape, then NTBackup on windows 7 can open them. I should point out that /dev/st0 automatically rewinds the tape after every operation. If you want to play with the rewind command with mt, use /dev/nst0 instead. The 'n' means non-rewinding. You'd need to wind the tape forward first as it, according to the 'status' command is at block 0 of file 0. The tape probably only has one file on it, but you can wind it forward a bit looking for the next file like so: 'mt -f /dev/nst0 fsf 1' That should have the drive wind forward looking for the next file, which probably doesn't exist as most just record one huge tar file! Anyway, press ctrl C to stop it (I think) and seeing as you used the non-rewinding device nst0 you can now issue the rewind command. Or you can issue the 'offline' command which will rewind and eject. Other 'st0' devices exist if you take a look in /dev, some will enable compression etc. Depends on what the Linux Kernel detected and the drive.

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Thank you, that's useful information. I may do another video in the future with a newer LTO drive and some proper Windows backup software. Thanks for watching.

[@x91w]

I tried a DLT drive from the 90s recently and could restore everything fine using Backup Exec. It's been in storage in my shed for 25+ years. I still use LTO on my home PC. I have an LTO7 (600GB) auto loader and 3 tapes is enough to backup my 16TB NAS. I write two copies with verify and store them in different locations twice a year. These days I mostly rely on disk to disk backup.

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Tape backups are still good for data archiving and don't suffer ransomware etc. Thanks for watching.

[@michaelhawthorne8696]

Goodness from 100GB to 18TB in just 20 yrs.... that's progress. I bet 18TB would take a while to transfer....... Looking forward to seeing the latter Jazzy...👍

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Yes it is quite a big jump isn't it. 18TB takes many hours to do a single backup. Thanks for watching.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Interesting drive and format, even cooler to have it fired up under Linux. It's a bit whirry, could use a mechanical checkup if you haven't done so already. You're on your way to becoming the Techmoan of computer tech, and I like that :)

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Couldn't do anything with it under modern Windows as native tape drive support has been removed, so fired it up under Linux. Most probably will do another video in the future with a more up to date LTO drive and some proper enterprise backup software.

[@meagrebones]

Great video, I didn't know such a thing existed.

[@JazzyJane_uk]

That's why I made the video. I thought it would be interesting for others to see inside one. LTO tape backup is still used all the time in enterprise size companies, just a lot newer models than this one. Thanks for watching.

[@chrisg6597]

I do believe the LTO drive isn't double height, but actually full height or normal height. The CD rom drive you took out is an half height drive. Most drive bays ended up as being half height of their original form factor.

[@wfkonynenberg5242]

Indeed, that LTO drive is standard 5.25" full height format as used by floppy drives, hard drives, and QIC tape drives. The half height stuff came later, and then the 3.5" stuff.

[@JazzyJane_uk]

@chrisg6597, @wfkonynenberg5242, you are both correct of course. I meant it was twice the height of the CD ROM I was taking out but said it wrong. Thank you for the correction and thanks for watching.

[@wfkonynenberg5242]

I'm surprised to learn that Windows completely removed tape drive support. I remember being a bit upset when Linux removed support for ISA controller cards for QIC24 tape drives some years ago...

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Yes, from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 there is no native tape support. Microsoft swapped to image backup and typical with Microsoft they want you to do things their way so removed NT Backup to force you to do it their way. You can of course use enterprise level backup software that does have tape drivers and does work with newer LTO drives. With Linux being free there is nothing to stop you running an old version of Linux that still does support ISA and QIC24, if you still have such an old computer.

[@wfkonynenberg5242]

@@JazzyJane_uk yup, that's basically what I have to do, since support for old 386 era CPUs was also removed. I have quite a bit of such old hardware, so I will continue running some older Linux versions.

[@craigmurray4746]

LTO5 and above appears in modern Windows like any other hard drive thanks to LTFS, so in theory even the limited built in Windows Server Backup for example should be able to write to it. For LTO1-4, there are no native Windows tools to write to the drive since those generations don't use LTFS and so depend on the backup application to do all the heavy lifting.

[@FeliciaByNature]

your name's Jazzy and you're not talking about the jazz drive? For shame ;) Love the video!

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Lol, you mean the Iomega Jaz Drive removable hard disk. I haven't got one to test so can't talk about it. I believe they were not very reliable and often got jammed in the drive mechanism. Thanks for liking the video and thanks for watching. Plenty more videos to come, I hope you subscribed.

[@FeliciaByNature]

@@JazzyJane_uk been subbed for a while now! Yeah the Jaz drives stunk!

[@KeritechElectronics]

@@JazzyJane_uk play Jazz the Jackrabbit from a Jaz drive, haha!

[@This-Is-The-End]

Fascinating! Thank you. PS: Linux is out of time!

[@JazzyJane_uk]

What do you mean 'Linux is out of time'. Linux is very much alive, especially in the enterprise market.

[@This-Is-The-End]

​@@JazzyJane_uk That's what I meant. Everything works on it even 2000's hardware. Please note that I don't master english very well, may be should have I been saying "Timeless" ?

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Ok yes, compatible with everything, old and new.

[@This-Is-The-End]

@@JazzyJane_uk Yeah! Linux kernel is here to stay.

[@uni-byte]

Didn't DEC develop LT technology before LTO came out?

[@JazzyJane_uk]

DEC developed the Digital Linear Tape (DLT) which was proprietary to them and in a single spool cartridge similar to the LTO cartridge. Then IBM, HP and Seagate got together to create the Linear Tape Open format that would be compatible across manufacturers. There were also other formats before LTO on dual spools with aluminium backplates and also some DAT tapes with rotating heads as well. LTO is still in great use in enterprises.

[@uni-byte]

@@JazzyJane_uk Yeah, the DLT was dropped when HP acquired DEC via their acquisition of Compaq. LTO was more advanced, and as you say, was made available to anyone that wanted to employ it. Pretty amazing capacity.

[@LawpickingLocksmith]

OMG how we have come such a long way now?

[@JazzyJane_uk]

Absolutely, big big progress. External hard disks and massive storage USB sticks etc. The most recent LTO tape drives are still in great use in large companies/enterprises and very useful for archival backup purposes and immune to Ransomware attacks.

[@LawpickingLocksmith]

@@JazzyJane_uk Never seen them whilst I had repaired 1000's of video recorders somehow putting luminance in FM onto the tape whilst adding colour. I think the B/W signal inc sync went from 3.8 to 4.8MHz giving the so called around 240 to 300 lines resolution. Once colour and B/W paths were connected separately we just neared the 450 lines. Now they already put 12K res stuff onto this tube.