Our experience has been much better. We upgraded from a library with 5
LTO2 drives to one with 4 LTO4 drives. Until everything on the LTO2
tapes expired, we were able to complete user requested restores using
the LTO4 drives to read the older LTO2 tapes 100% of the time we needed
to... Fortunately, we have pretty low restore request frequencies (only
2 or 3 a month at most). Maybe we were lucky in that we had compatible
firmware in the newer drives that provided good support for reading LTO2
tapes ??? Either way, we've had a very positive experience.... 

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of kit
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011 12:27 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Can a LTO-4 drive really read a LTO-2 tape ??

My practical experience is that they will fail to read the LTO2 tapes
some of the time. One site it was 50% of them (they would read on an
LTO2 reinstalled), another about 5%, others with no problems. No real
explanation was found. We suspected 

Kit

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