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Hello everyone,

I have a task that I’d like a little help from.

We have been running backup exec with a LTO-2 Tape library for many years. We are moving on to other technologies, prompted by the fact that the old library failed. However, we still have a cabinet full of LTO-2 tapes from the past few years that we may need to recover from.

So, I am trying to put together something that makes sense for under $2,000 that will allow us to recover the backups from the tapes, if necessary. I’d rather not use our current backup server, due to a combination of a). it’s running backups and I don’t want to break it, b). the backup exec can’t be moved to another machine and c). it doesn’t have a spare slot for the scsi card (took it out for USB 3.0).

These are my questions:

1). Do you know of a good source for refurbished LTO-2 Tape drive? it doesn’t need to have robotic library capabilties. If we needed to, we can manually feed it. Maybe if I could find one that his backwards compatible?

2). Are all LTO-2 tape drives SCSI only? I’d love to be able to connect it through USB. Do you have any good experiences with USB to SCSI adapters?

3). The tape libraries are backed up by backup exec. However, I want to say that I should be able to use another tool to recover them, since it basically writes .bkf files that are universal. Does that sound right? Is there a default windows utility to restore .bkf files?

Thanks everyone

8 Spice ups
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Ebay. LTO-2 drives can be found very cheap there. You aren’t going to find a native USB version.

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The LTO spec calls for the drive to have the ability to read two versions back and write to one version back.

LTO-3 and before used parallel SCSI - LVD Ultra160/320.

LTO-4 and later used SAS.

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^^

You’ll be able to read LTO2 tapes on an LTO4 drive with the right software to allow you to read the data.

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Just bought an LTO5 HP 24-tape library on ebay for about $1350. LTO4 were cheaper. Or, you can just swap the internal drives.

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Could you please share an idea why go with LTO-2?.. when VTL is more than free today and not so complicated to deploy.

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He has old tapes he may need to access. Not planning to use tape going forward.

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How are you going to recover data from those tapes if you’re not going to use your current backup server? You need a machine running backup exec that you could restore your catalog to before being able to recover any data from those tapes. Your other alternative, that you mentioned, is running a utility that can read those BKF files from the tapes. It seems to me it would be doable but labor intensive. How would you know which tape contains the data you need?

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