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LTO-5 and LTFS on a Mac

 
wbwatches
Occasional Visitor

LTO-5 and LTFS on a Mac

Been hitting a bunch of brick walls on this one.

 

I'm using an HP Ultrium 3000 LTO-5 drive, an ATTO H680 card in my Mac Pro tower, currently running OS 10.5.6.

 

I just need someone to explain LTFS to me.  I keep trying the commands involved in the HP packet to no avail.  When LTFS is up and running properly, does it really become as simple as dragging a bunch of files to some mounted volume and, conversely, having a list of files on the LTO tape that I can then drag off onto my computer?

 

Basically any and all help from someone who's actually used this and used it successfully would be VERY much appreciated.  Thank you!

1 REPLY 1
ChrisMartin
Occasional Advisor

Re: LTO-5 and LTFS on a Mac

What error messages are you getting when you try to use LTFS?  There may be some clues in there to help figure out what's going wrong..

 

Yes, you should be able to drag files to and from the tape volume, although doing it via Finder may cause the operations to take longer than doing it via a terminal window.. 

 

The sequence of operations you need to do is:

( 0.  Prepare the system by installing MacFUSE and then the LTFS package itself)

1.  Format the tape using the mkltfs command.  This creates a tape that has the LTFS format on it.

2.  Mount the tape onto the system using the ltfs command.  This makes the tape accessible to the OS and ready for writing / reading.

3.  Copy your files onto the tape.

4.  Unmount the tape (eject the volume on the desktop or use the umount command).

 

 The hp website includes a "User Guide" which should guide you through the stages, worth consulting if you haven't seen it.  As I say, if you can provide details on the failing step(s) and any error message(s) it would help identify the problem.

 

Chris