Ultrium 1-SCSI Drive and C7145 1/9 Autoloader Compatiblity

[Dave Williams UK]

My tape drives are probably getting close to the end of their useful lives now on two autoloaders I have. However the autoloaders themselves are working fine! Is it possible to upgrade to later HP drives in order to provide a more cost effective upgrade path than the expense of replacing a completely serviceable pair of autoloaders? As a one man operation cash is not an abundant commodity!

[Curtis Ballard]

Automation versions of HP-LTO2 and HP-LTO3 drives can be used in the 1/9 autoloader but unfortunately there is no upgrade kit available. I don't know if LTO-4 can be made to work.

[Dave Williams UK]

Presume you are talking of Ultrium 960 for LTO-3 for example. I guess there is a need to either specify the correct variant or somehow transfer the autoloader registration markers across.

Whilst unsupported it might give my autoloader a new lease of life - especially if I could find a bargain price LTO-2 drive!

[Curtis Ballard]

You can't transfer settings. You have to find an automation version of the LTO-2 drive and it's best if it is an HP automation version. Several versions are close enough but I think there was one that didn't work.

[Dave Williams UK]

Thanks - I would always go for HP. I've been using HP for many years so trust the brand.

Off topic - the company I work for were an OEM partner with HP back in the 1990's and we did quite a lot of work helping them design the DDS1 and DDS2 DAT drive family for use in contact centre voice recording applications - which is a lot different from backups. We had to make changes to both hardware and firmware to cope with the stop/start nature of operation and need for 100% unattended mission critical usage,