# How to mount a LTO tape-drive??



## Post-Republic (Jun 16, 2009)

Hi folks,
I was wondering if there's a possibility to mount a LTO-drive like a removable hard drive?
I'm only using it with my Retrospect backup software but now I need to open different tapes directly.

I'm thankful for every information.

BR,
Eric


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Jun 16, 2009)

Tape drives cannot be "mounted" like regular hard drives.  Tape drives are sequential storage devices, meaning it's near impossible to be able to "mount" a tape drive and browse it.

You'll need to use the software that originally created the data on the tapes to "browse" the data on the tapes.


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## Post-Republic (Jun 16, 2009)

thanks,
that's what I thought. But my client how gave me a LTO tape told me about some kind of a javascript which is able to browse a LTO tape like a finder-window.
Do you know anything about that?


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Jun 16, 2009)

I have not heard anything about a Javascript-based tape drive browser, nor could I find any reference to it with a little Googling.

I can see how this may be possible -- or may _seem_ possible: perhaps the Javascript was actually browsing the tape _catalog_ file (basically an index of all files located on the tape), and not the actual tape drive itself.

Can your client provide a link where he/she found the Javascript tape browser script?


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## Whitehill (Jul 13, 2010)

I have an Exabyte VXA2 drive on firewire.  In the past I have written tapes only through my backup software, BRU.  I stopped paying annual support about 2 years ago because it had become too pricey for my circumstances - and my installed version has begun to exhibit flakiness under Snow Leopard.

Further, I dimly recall hearing, I forget the source, that OSX has never had any device-level support for tapes.  Be that as it may, ...

How can I write tapes, and read them back, using "free" tools?  I am not afraid of the command line.


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## littleleopard (Jul 19, 2010)

Did you find anything? My situation is the following, in case somebody knows how to help me:

I have an iMac 10.4.11 and I need to recover LTO3 data. The thing is I don't know which software they used to backup and I don't have access to this information. I'm using HP StorageWords 1840 (with a scsi/firewire converter) to read the tape and I've installed BRU LE (Evaluation Edition) to try to read it. But I get this message:

"BRU was unable to read the contents of the current tape. Either the tape is blank, contains non-BRU archives, or was created with a different buffer size than 128k. If this is a known BRU tape, double check the buffer size setting in preferences and retry the import."

So my closest guess (since I know the tape is not blank) BRU will just read BRU files, correct?

Is there any other software that I could try to use to read this data?

I need to make sure it works before buying it.

LL


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## Whitehill (Jul 22, 2010)

I haven't found anything.  I also haven't been looking since my last post.

I assume without proof that BRU uses a proprietary format.  Ditto Retrospect.  Did you try that?


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## littleleopard (Jul 26, 2010)

Not yet. But I guessing my main problem is the connection (scsi/firewire converter). Tomorrow I'll be able to test with a G5.

Tks


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## fwalker70 (Sep 9, 2010)

FYI - There was a product that could mount tapes in the finder (OS 9) but i don't know if they continued development into OS X and into the LTO technology. It's a shame they didn't.

http://www.optimatech.com/software/desktapepro.html


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