Tape Backup Drives, Libraries and Autoloaders

Hewlett Packard and Quantum LTO internal and external tape backup drives. LTO (Linear Tape Open, the most popular backup tape technology in use today. LTO 6 drives and tapes offer storage capacities up to 3TB native and up to 6.25TB compressed. LTO tape drive use industry standard back-up software or can be accessed using LTFS.

Tape Autoloaders and Tape Libraries. Both Tape Autoloaders and Tape Libraries consist of a tape drive, a number of slots to hold tape cartridges, a barcode reader and a robotic arm to load and unload tapes. A Tape Autoloader has only one tape drive. Tape Libraries are more sophisticated and have (or has capacity for) two or more tape drives.

LTFS  - A new feature starting with LTO-5, and all higher generation tape drives, is Linear Tape File System (LTFS).  LTFS allows you to use the tape almost as if it were a USB drive or external hard disk. You can drag and drop files from your server to the tape, see the list of saved files using a standard operating system directory, and use point and click to restore. To implement this feature, all you need to download and install LTFS software on your host machine.