Any reason not to get HPE LT0 6 Tape drives?

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Kneelbeforezod

Active Member
Sep 4, 2015
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I'm thinking about messing with tape so was on Ebay looking at some HPE Tape drives LTO6. There seems to be a lot of dislike for The HPE Tape stuff over on Datahoarder/Homelab but it seems centered around access to firmware. Is there any reason to not get if i just want to use it for archiving?
Thanks
 

Stephan

Well-Known Member
Apr 21, 2017
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LTO5+6 single drives home user here. I am a fan of LTO because of data durability (30 years according to manufacturer) and cheapness of media by now (2020). 2.5 TB sealed cartridges for 10 EUR if you can wait a little for a good offer. So by all means go for it.

Access to IBM LTO6 firmware is easier, just open the anonymously accessible readme and modify the URL to point to the containing directory. There will be a 6-10 MB binary. Use itdt to flash, just copy it to /input. Make sure you get the right version (sas or fibre, half-height HH or full-height FH). TS2260 would be the drive to look for. For IBM always get Fujifilm or (same) IBM-OEM media, Sony/Maxell aka "HP" is too rough. Else you will damage the head and incur "pole tip recession" aka dead drive. Alot of IBM LTO5 drives with the wrong media died this way prematurely. MP or BaFe does not matter for LTO6. There will be not a whole lot new firmwares anymore though. KAJ1 is the latest, bugs that *you* could hit are now very rare. This is for single drives, tape libraries might be different.

My LTO5 is an IBM under Dell-OEM label. Firmware even easier to get, but different header so you need the Dell version.

For software I use a custom Bareos version to write Fulls every 1st Saturday of a quarter, then incrementals every day until the next full.

The only thing problematic is cooling and therefore fan noise. You have to cool the drives properly, else the electronics attached to the bottom metal plate will get too warm and the drive will shut off. In addition I think there is such a relatively high powered fan in enclosures for tape dust removal from the head area. But I am only speculating on that one. What I am saying make sure to operate the drive as intended by the manufacturer.

Sadly all enclosures by IBM that I know will not turn on when power is applied, you have to push the button as well. My workaround was to solder two thin isolated cables to the power button's two free pins and run them towards the back low-profile slot, where I connect them without contact to the case to outside (tip and middle pin of a 2.5mm stereo audio plug, next to the service network port). From there the cable runs to a USB relais box which I can control via a shell script. The bareos configuration will turn on the correct drive by running a script before the job, that will wait a bit for the drive to settle down after powerup, load the tape and then the backup job will run. In the end, everything is scripted in reverse, rewind, eject, wait for drive to cool down a bit, turn off power. Turning on and off is just a short pulse through the relais. I like it quiet and this way I hear the drive only at 6pm for like 10 minutes for the incremental run.
 

Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
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New York City
www.glaver.org
I'm thinking about messing with tape so was on Ebay looking at some HPE Tape drives LTO6. There seems to be a lot of dislike for The HPE Tape stuff over on Datahoarder/Homelab but it seems centered around access to firmware. Is there any reason to not get if i just want to use it for archiving?
I'm not sure if HP makes their own drives or OEMs them from somebody else. Even Quantum (HP's long-term drive supplier) seems to be using IBM drives these days.

I have a customer that for maintenance reasons can only use HP tape drives, and they have the drives fail quite frequently, from a variety of causes. That's something I've never seen on IBM drives, which tend to wear out from long-term use, not fail catastrophically. And of course there's the firmware paywall if you don't have a current support contract.
 

Kneelbeforezod

Active Member
Sep 4, 2015
529
122
43
46
LTO5+6 single drives home user here. I am a fan of LTO because of data durability (30 years according to manufacturer) and cheapness of media by now (2020). 2.5 TB sealed cartridges for 10 EUR if you can wait a little for a good offer. So by all means go for it.

Access to IBM LTO6 firmware is easier, just open the anonymously accessible readme and modify the URL to point to the containing directory. There will be a 6-10 MB binary. Use itdt to flash, just copy it to /input. Make sure you get the right version (sas or fibre, half-height HH or full-height FH). TS2260 would be the drive to look for. For IBM always get Fujifilm or (same) IBM-OEM media, Sony/Maxell aka "HP" is too rough. Else you will damage the head and incur "pole tip recession" aka dead drive. Alot of IBM LTO5 drives with the wrong media died this way prematurely. MP or BaFe does not matter for LTO6. There will be not a whole lot new firmwares anymore though. KAJ1 is the latest, bugs that *you* could hit are now very rare. This is for single drives, tape libraries might be different.

My LTO5 is an IBM under Dell-OEM label. Firmware even easier to get, but different header so you need the Dell version.

For software I use a custom Bareos version to write Fulls every 1st Saturday of a quarter, then incrementals every day until the next full.

The only thing problematic is cooling and therefore fan noise. You have to cool the drives properly, else the electronics attached to the bottom metal plate will get too warm and the drive will shut off. In addition I think there is such a relatively high powered fan in enclosures for tape dust removal from the head area. But I am only speculating on that one. What I am saying make sure to operate the drive as intended by the manufacturer.

Sadly all enclosures by IBM that I know will not turn on when power is applied, you have to push the button as well. My workaround was to solder two thin isolated cables to the power button's two free pins and run them towards the back low-profile slot, where I connect them without contact to the case to outside (tip and middle pin of a 2.5mm stereo audio plug, next to the service network port). From there the cable runs to a USB relais box which I can control via a shell script. The bareos configuration will turn on the correct drive by running a script before the job, that will wait a bit for the drive to settle down after powerup, load the tape and then the backup job will run. In the end, everything is scripted in reverse, rewind, eject, wait for drive to cool down a bit, turn off power. Turning on and off is just a short pulse through the relais. I like it quiet and this way I hear the drive only at 6pm for like 10 minutes for the incremental run.
Thanks for the detailed information!
 

Ed.

New Member
Oct 4, 2014
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I bought an external LTO-5 external tape drive for $200 last year, and HP's policy is you have you have a service contract before they will let you download the latest Firmware which would most likely cost more that I paid for the drive itself. Tandberg, Quantum, IBM allow you to download that firmware for free if you require it but not HPE, they want a service contract! I managed to find it on the web but it took a long time.

Unfortunately I was advised not to use other makes firmware to flash it by a company who repairs these tape drives, as there are probably differences in the hardware side of things, (hence the firmware may be different) whilst they are all compatible to the the LTO tape reading and writing side of things, how they achieve it may vary with the way the drives are designed.

So now I will not buy any more HPE stuff out of principle.