With Google Workspace cracking down on storage (Been using them for unlimited storage for years now) I was lucky to get a limit of 300TBs, but now I have to actually watch what gets stored lol
A good portion is uh “Linux ISOs”, but the rest is very seldom (In many cases last access was years ago) accessed files that I think would be perfect for tape archival. Things like byte-to-byte drive images and old backups. I figure these would be a good candidate for tape and estimate this portion would be about 100TBs or more
But I’ve never done tape before, so I’m looking for some purchasing advice and such. I seen from some of my research that I should target picking up an LTO8 drive as it’s compatible with LTO9 for when they come down in price.
And then it spiraled from there with discussions on library tape drives that are cheaper but need modifications and all sorts of things
Do you have any distro or hardware advice? I have an external drive, and I’ve bought several fiber channel cards for it and none of them seem to work either with my motherboard or distribution.
I used an LSI 8i SAS card, with a standard SAS cable to my internal SAS tape drive. Then I just used plain ubuntu to get it up and running. The LSI cards are my go-to for anything SAS, used them for 10 years and never had a single one fail.
Edit @constantokra@lemmy.one I remembered I had this saved, this saved me a ton of time setting up my drive last time, everything I needed: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/lto-tape-drive-linux-experience-4175620090/
I probably should have gotten a sad drive, but I found a good deal on an external fiber channel one and I didn’t realize how difficult fiber channel cards could be.
I’d be interested to hear how it goes, I’m looking at replacing mine. If you get yours to work, please report back. I’m actively looking for a new LTO8 drive
That’s a great resource. Thanks for sharing.