# Backup software choices for LTO tape drive?



## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

After having abandoned my 35 GB Sony AIT Tape drive when I upgraded to Windows 7 as its backup software no longer supports tape drives, I just bought an HP LTO5 1.5 TB tape drive but will need to get a backup program. The HP page says you get a free download but I don't know if I'll be able to since I bought the drive used.

What backup programs support LTO tape drives and have these features:

Absolute necesscity:
-Ability to backup open files
-Ability to do incremental backups

Would be nice:
-Be able to restore without having to re-install Windows first
-Ability to set scheduled backups set to be on specific tapes and if the wrong tape is in it will request the correct one

I'd like the software to ideally be free but otherwise under $100.

Thanks


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## JMPC (Jan 15, 2011)

Any reason you're using tape for home backup? is this for a business that requires it?
You can get a trial for EaseUS ToDo Backup for Workstations that supports tape:
EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation - Backup software for Windows PCs, Laptops and Workstations.

The trial should provide you enough time to determine if this will work for you.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I've always used tape drives for backup due to the much lower cost per GB, I only stopped using my last Sony AIT tape drive in 2010 because that's when I upgraded to Windows 7 which no longer supports tape drives in the atrocious Windows 7 Backup program (why didn't they keep the far better backup program that had been included with Windows before?)

Since 2010 I've been using removable 2.5" hard drives as large floppy disks to do backups but my hard drives are now 6 years old and hard drives aren't designed to sit unused in a safe. It's time I upgrade my hard drives due to their age and capacity and coincidentally a friend told me he was considering an LTO tape drive for low cost backups so I looked into it and happened to get an incredible deal on a barely used internal LTO5 drive (I would never have paid full price).

I do also happen to run my own business from home so it's important I have reliable backups and long term the tape drive will end up costing a lot less, in fact with the price I paid it's almost already costing less.

Apparently I get a free download of some backup software with the HP LTO5 drive, but will that apply to me since I got it used? I also tried to download the HP StoreOpen software and the overcomplicated download steps on the HP website just always end up in an error and I can never download it. Does anyone know how to get downloads from the HP website to work?

Thanks


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

HP only shows the following as compatible with your Hardware.

Supported software environment
Apple OS X
Linux
Microsoft Windows 2008
Microsoft Windows 2008 (64-bit support only)
Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (AMD64/EM64T)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
SLES 11

I was looking for software that you could use.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I'm sure I've seen videos of LTO5 drives working in Windows 7 (unless there's another version of Windows that looks like Windows 7).

Also on the download page there is an option for Windows 7 64. Are you able to download anything at all, or more specifically the HP StoreOpen software?

I've told HP if they can't get me my download in 24 hours I'm returning the drive and buying a competing brand who's website has downloads that work.

Thanks


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I called HP and all they could tell me is that the website gives them the same error if they try to download it. They transferred me but the other department wanted the serial number which I don't yet have since I haven't received the drive yet (I'm just trying to get the software installed so it's ready when I do get it).


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

I found that Windows 7 is compatible. Call HP at this special number for out of warranty products: 800-334-5144. The software for your tape drive is a well kept secret.

Any reason not to forget the whole thing and use a cloud service?


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

Corday said:


> I found that Windows 7 is compatible. Call HP at this special number for out of warranty products: 800-334-5144. The software for your tape drive is a well kept secret.


That's the number I called where all they could tell me is that they get the same error if they try to download it too. I was given another number but they want the serial number which I don't yet have as I haven't received the drive yet.

Did I just buy a really expensive paperweight or will I eventually be able to get the software?

I don't even know if I need the software anyway, I know LTO5 and above drives offer drive letter access, and I'm assuming you need HP StoreOpen to get this feature, I doubt a tape drive would appear with a drive letter without special software.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

Corday said:


> Any reason not to forget the whole thing and use a cloud service?


I couldn't even imagine backing up such large amounts of data online, wouldn't it take days, weeks or even months just to make one backup? Wouldn't there be expensive monthly fees to pay for the storage space? I also want a backup solution where I can do a restore from a PC that no longer has an OS, I highly doubt cloud backup could do this. And what if at some point either the company goes bankrupt or the government blocks the internet, I'd have no access to my backups. I would never trust my data to a "backup" that's completely out of my control.

Edit: And what if this cloud company got hacked and all my private data ends up in some criminal's hands? I'm sorry but cloud backup seems completely absurd to me.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Just a point on cloud backups, not to push them. For a business, data doesn't take up as much room as a typical personal user who backs up photos and media.
aab1: I don't know the size of your data, but if a 3-terabyte USB 3.0 hard drive costs less than $100 using any of the popular backup programs, it could be your solution.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

My data is far too important to be trusted to a single backup disk. I keep at least 3 separate backups on removable hard drives now that are stored in a safe. Even just 2 hard drives that wouldn't even be big enough for a full backup would have cost me more than the tape drive that will allow me to make a full backup on $60 of tapes instead of several hundred dollars of hard drives.

In any case I was able to find HP StoreOpen from an independent website that had the setup file from HP. By the way, this software is only needed to provide drive letter access to the drive to be able to use tapes like regular removable storage (I'm not yet sure if I'll use this feature but want to be able to try it to decide), you can still make backups with the tape drive without HP StoreOpen.

It also seems HP are looking into why their download isn't working.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Glad it's sorted out and it's good it wasn't PW protected so once the drive was recognized, you were in business. For future reference, the more you describe your needs, the better the chance of getting responsive useful answers. There's a huge difference between General Motors and the neighborhood street vendor and it's so much easier when we can get a quick grasp of the intended outcome.
As a sidelight, I once took over an organization that used incremental tape backups, but months before the final 'merger", the Admin decided to stop the process (he was grossly incompetent). It made doing due diligence that much harder. Needless to say, I didn't need his "services" much longer.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

Corday said:


> Glad it's sorted out and it's good it wasn't PW protected so once the drive was recognized, you were in business. For future reference, the more you describe your needs, the better the chance of getting responsive useful answers. There's a huge difference between General Motors and the neighborhood street vendor and it's so much easier when we can get a quick grasp of the intended outcome.
> As a sidelight, I once took over an organization that used incremental tape backups, but months before the final 'merger", the Admin decided to stop the process (he was grossly incompetent). It made doing due diligence that much harder. Needless to say, I didn't need his "services" much longer.


What wasn't password protected? The download?

In any case the drive wasn't recognized because it's still in the mail, but at least I got the software for it installed so that it will be ready to use after the drive and SAS card are installed.

However that still leaves me having to find a backup program (HP StoreOpen is not a backup program). What are options under $100 that support LTO drives? I think Acronis is $120 which is a bit more than I'd want to pay. I heard of ArcServe Backup but they absolutely refuse to tell you the cost on their website so I can only imagine it's WAY out of my price range if the price is top secret.

BTW the HP page for my tape drive says it includes a free download of Yosemite Backup Basic but I can't find how you get this free download. Is Yosemite Backup Basic even good? Does it at least support the features I said I need in my OP?

Thanks


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Most of us here prefer Acronis. Try shopping around. There are many versions. At the top of the list is a Server program that costs a Grand for a perpetual license, but you don't need that.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I just got my drive working today and must say I don't like Acronis. Firsly it's the first program I used in over 20 years to not support keyboard shortcuts like pressing Y for Yes on a Yes/No question dialog. Even the up and down arrows can't be used for scrolling and you need to use the scroll bar with the mouse. This is unacceptable for a $120 program.

I also really don't like the backup progress dialog, it looks like a report you'd expect to get at the end of a backup. Where's the progress bar, files/bytes backed up and total, estimated time remaining?

I'm going to continue looking, what other options are there around $100 or less?

Thanks


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

Acronis also stupidly lists your drives as "Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3, Disk 4", how are you supposed to know what's what?

Even if it was free this is absurd. Why is it that this is apparently the preferred program?

Or did I maybe get a special April's Fools version and the real one is not really that bad?


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

It's all personal preference and the specific needs of the user. The disc #s make perfect sense to me and I'm sure you figured it out also. I don't know what business program you use, but the one I had before retirement had its own backup program available (at extra cost of course).


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## jimscreechy (Jan 7, 2005)

you could try Retrospect at retrospect.com. I think the desktop edition (which does also support tape drives) is about £90. I used it a few years ago, it wasn't the easiest solution to manipulate but it was reliable and fairly comprehensive. Maybe Backup Exec have a desktop version too, have you checked. 

I used to exclusively use tape for my data backup but it is just too expensive these days. The cost per GB for tape is far more expensive these days and doesn't even come close to cost per GB against disk storage. Domestic users don't seem to even want to touch a tape drive these days and I cant say I blame them... but to each his own.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

jimscreechy said:


> you could try Retrospect at retrospect.com. I think the desktop edition (which does also support tape drives) is about £90. I used it a few years ago, it wasn't the easiest solution to manipulate but it was reliable and fairly comprehensive. Maybe Backup Exec have a desktop version too, have you checked.
> 
> I used to exclusively use tape for my data backup but it is just too expensive these days. The cost per GB for tape is far more expensive these days and doesn't even come close to cost per GB against disk storage. Domestic users don't seem to even want to touch a tape drive these days and I cant say I blame them... but to each his own.


I'll try retrospect but about tape costs, I think you looked at the wrong place or something. I get a 1.5TB (3 TB compressed 2:1) tape for $20 or less, how in the world can you get a better price per TB with hard drives? I think tapes are 15 times cheaper per TB than hard drives, that's the very reason I've almost always used tape for backup.

Thanks


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I'm trying the NovaBackup Trial and so far like it way better than Acronis. It supports keyboard shortcuts like every other program, shows drives as letters (and no, I don't think it makes any sense to show them as numbers), has a good progress dialog with details and estimated time remaining.

The only thing that bothers me is there's a yearly fee but it's about a third the cost of Acronis but yearly. I wondering if you can no longer use the software at all if you don't renew after a year or if you just no longer get support and updates, does anyone know? I was really looking for a one time cost software but so far this is the only one I really like and the yearly cost is reasonable so it's looking like a winner.

I hadn't downloaded the NovaBackup Trial until now because I wanted to avoid yearly fee software but since I didn't like anything else I tried so far I finally decided to try NovaBackup and it seems to be just the type of program I'm looking for, and it's doing a backup to my tape drive right now.

By the way I thought I had to be misunderstanding when I read these LTO5 drives need to pass the tape end to end 80 times to fill it, but it's true, about every 2 minutes you hear the tape reverse direction. All my previous tape drives could fill a tape in a single pass, yet where infinitely slower despite this (4MB/sec vs 140mb/sec native).


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Here's an independent review: NovaBACKUP Professional Review (updated for version 16) - BackupReview.com


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I haven't tried differential backups yet which the review mentions are very slow, but it is unable to backup open files and gives VSS errors. I'll look into their help page about this on their website when I have time. I also have a newer version than that review is for.

I was also thinking, would it be a better idea to use a removable hard drive to backup an image of the system drive in case I ever need to restore from an unbootable system? Will a bootable recovery disc be able to load the drivers for the SAS card and tape drive? In any case I think a 3rd backup of my system drive on a removable hard drive would be a good idea.

The system drive is only 2% of the data I back up so that would be just a partial backup while the tape drive could do full backups.

BTW, I'm still waiting to hear about those 1.5TB hard drives that cost significantly less than $20 each. Can they also do 140 MB/Sec like my tape drive?


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Reinstalls of B/U HDDs OSs require reinstalling drivers. Don't know where the $20 came from. Typical cost more like $60-$90. System B/U is of course a good idea. You might also investigate a raid for the whole deal unless your totally committed to tape. Even though you got the HP working, take a look at the size options this offers: Backup Plus Desktop Drive: 4TB External Storage Hard Drives| Seagate


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

The $20 thing was in reply to the poster that claims hard drives cost less per TB than tapes, I don't know where he got that, but tape will always be infinitely cheaper than hard drives (I beleive it's 15 times cheaper per TB). The $20 is because I can get a 1.5TB tape under $20 and this poster says he can get hard drives for significantly cheaper, so I'm waiting for him to show me those 1.5TB hard drives for well under $20.

That external backup thing is simply not an option for me:
-I have no spare outlets for external hardware
-I have no space for external hardware
-Hard drives are way too expensive per TB compared to tape, just getting enough of those hard drives (I would need several 4 TB models) would cost hundreds more than a tape drive and enough tapes to have as many TBs
-Hard drives aren't meant to be left inactive for months in a safe, tapes are

A RAID is also in no way a backup, please don't make people believe a RAID is a backup as I've heard so many horror stories of people losing decades of work because they foolishly thought a RAID was a backup. A RAID ONLY protects you against a drive crash, it doesn't protect you against accidental deletion, viruses, power surges, etc.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I just lost my post because of those annoying expired token errors so I'll re-write it in short.

I just did an incremental backup in NovaBackup and it took 3 minutes, 30-60 seconds of which was to fast forward the tape to append it to the previous backup, so they seem to have fixed that in the newer version.

It still can't backup open files though which is a feature I absolutely need. I get these errors:

Open File Backup : Exception received while attempting to snap volumes

System error 80004005: Unable to create drive snapshot using command 'C:\Program Files (x86)\NovaStor\NovaStor NovaBACKUP\x64\snapCmd.exe /backup 67 69 '

The operation will continue without VSS support

does anyone know how to solve this?

Thanks (copying post this time, just in case)


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## jimscreechy (Jan 7, 2005)

Yes its fine if your only talking about the cost per tape but that is not how you calculate the cost. You have to count the cost of the hardware to use that tape, the tape drive, which costs you £1000 and then the software to run it which your on here saying is too expensive. That all contributes to the total cost of ownership for the backup solution, not just the tape cartridge.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

jimscreechy said:


> Yes its fine if your only talking about the cost per tape but that is not how you calculate the cost. You have to count the cost of the hardware to use that tape, the tape drive, which costs you £1000 and then the software to run it which your on here saying is too expensive. That all contributes to the total cost of ownership for the backup solution, not just the tape cartridge.


I don't recall saying it's too expensive, I said I really don't like the interface of Acronis, it's insulting they charge $120 for such poorly made software. However I really like NovaBackup and would buy it if I can fix it's open file issues.

Also, no software is needed if you want to use the tapes like hard drives/usb sticks, and you'd need a backup program to backup to hard drives too, so that point is really meaningless. I also got the tape drive used/like new for about 30% of its original cost.

In any case, I have enough data to backup (and I always keep at LEAST 2 backups) that there's no way hard drives would ever cost less than a tape drive's total cost in my situation.

Also, for large companies, just the electricity to power hard drives costs more than the tape drives, tapes and electricity to run the tape drives.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I'm still having VSS issues in NovaBackup so I'll give Acronis another chance, after all I prefer a horrible user interface than a program that doesn't backup everything.

However I read VSS errors can be due to low disk space so I'll look into that. However after re-trying Acronis I will make sure it's actually backing up my open files, maybe it has the same problem as NovaBackup but doesn't make the errors obvious, so I'll look at the logs for any errors.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

As I'm trying Acronis again I noticed it said it couldn't read the last 10 or so files which happen to be about 4 GB each. I have a feeling it's because the tape got full either because of something else already on or the compression actually making files larger which I've seen in previous backup programs when compressing compressed files.

I just noticed software encryption was enabled in Acronis which explains why it was slower than expected and having high cpu usage. I also enabled the hardware compression of the tape drive itself but can it also cause compressed files to actually become larger?

I was going to ask if hardware compression slows the backup like software compression, but I remember HP says the backup speed doubles if you get 2:1 compression.

One thing that just may ruin Acronis for me is that the backup that had 10 or so files fail to backup is completely unrestorable as if it's not on the tape. Does Acronis really make backups completely inaccessible if a single error occurs? That's ridiculous. Oh, 1 file failed to backup, so let's just delete the 50,000 other files too.

Another minor annoyance, the progress quickly jumped to 85% in a few minutes (it should take 2 hours or more to do 85%) but stayed there for 2 hours or so, it couldn't possibly be more inaccurate.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Some of what you're observing is common when dealing with a new app. If you haven't already done so, download the manual Acronis Manuals, True Image 2016 User Guides, Tutorials to become more familiar with the product. Acronis also supplies support and a forum.


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## aab1 (Apr 1, 2008)

I've given up on NovaBackup, while it has the best user interface of all programs I tried, VSS doesn't seem to work and while they reply fast to emails, their responses are all but useless. They really don't seem to want me to subscribe for $50/month as their replies completely ignore the questions I ask.

I've finally been able to get the free copy of Yosemite Server Backup Basic that you get with the tape drive and so far I really like it but haven't had time to try it enough to know if it's something I'll want to use, but it seems to do what I want and is free.


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