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I am looking to implement an LTO-5 tape backup system on a currently shipping Mac OS X Server (10.6.7) tower (PCI Express Card compatible). This backup system would be used only to offload data for long term storage to free up space for current data.

I am new to this so I am not certain whether native support for LTO-5 storage systems exists in Mac OS X Server and whether I need to look into any software in addition to basic filesystem support.

Any insights and links to resources are welcome. Excuse me for the basic nature of this post - I am at the point in my research when I don't even know what the search terms that will bring up relevant results are...

bmike
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Manca Weeks
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  • Not sure if off-topic. We've had meta discussions about shopping questions looking for rare components but I'm not sure what the final result was. Still +1 for mentioning tape drives. – AndrejaKo Jun 05 '11 at 21:02
  • I would expect http://serverfault.com to have more LTO users as tapes become economical when storing vast amounts of offline data and perhaps http://apple.stackexchange.com more users familiar with Mac Pro drivers and software for SAS storage. Your software / manpower costs are likely to exceed the $2k to $5k you'll spend on the hardware. – bmike Aug 09 '11 at 18:03
  • maybe you could explain why you want to do this on a Mac? Extending your scope to include other OS would make this much more mainstream... – Florenz Kley Aug 10 '11 at 20:33

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Most new tape drives especially after LTO-4 usually have a SAS interface. Most vendors like HP, IBM, Dell have LTO-5 drives available now. All you would need is to have a SAS PCI express card so that you can connect the tape drive to the server.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint%20Technologies/RRAID4311/

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/657316-REG/LaCie_131016_ATTO_ExpressSAS_R380_PCI.html

Bahrain Admin
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