Mark, are you using an "intelligent" robot?
i.e. a robot that interfaces with the drive in some way, to tell the
drive what type of media is being inserted (ie according to label?)
The compatibility matrix I'm reading now inidcates that LTO provides 2
generation read back, and 1 generation read/write back across all
formats, so providing your LTO2 drives knew they were looking at LTO1
media, they should have been able to write to the media in such a way
that it would still be usable by the LTO1 drives.
I'm looking for the hard fact indicating that this indeed means the
drive can write the same format as one previous generation, or just that
it can write to the media type.
Paul
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com [mailto:Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com]
> Sent: October 27, 2005 12:57 PM
> To: Paul Keating; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] using lto2 media in lto3 drives
>
>
> I can't speak for LTO2 to LTO3 but I have LTO1 & LTO2.
>
> LTO1 media, once *written* in an LTO2 drive is no longer
> readable in an LTO1
> drive. That's made it difficult on my side to slowly
> convert, too. LTO2
> writes more efficiently on LTO1 tape, increasing the
> effective data density,
> but the data is unreadable in and LTO1 drive.
>
> I ended up building multiple storage units with different
> media types &
> slowly added the denser media as a new media type to match.
>
> There's a report that restores are media-type aware, too. I
> thought I could
> "fake" my media on my long-term storage, using vmchange to
> convert my filled
> offsite media to HCART2 so that it would read in my LTO2
> drives. I've been
> told that I would shoot myself in the foot on restores.
> While you can fake
> convert empty media to a new media type, filled media would
> fail in restore.
> Somewhere in the DB, says the report, if a restore is
> triggered, it says
> "such-and-so file is on tape XX whick is HCART media". If
> vmchange was used
> to "convert" the media type to HCART2, then the restore fails
> because the
> media type doesn't match.
>
> I haven't tried this yet - I should test it thoroughly - but it's a
> consideration.
>
> -M
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu]On Behalf Of
> Paul Keating
> Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 6:05 AM
> To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: [Veritas-bu] using lto2 media in lto3 drives
>
>
> I just got some new drives for my environment, going into my
> 2 L700s with my
> existing LTO2 drives.
>
> at the moment, the robot is full of LTO2 media, and we don't
> intend to add
> LTO 3 media for a while....is there any voodoo needed to get
> the LTO3 drives
> to oprate properly with the lto2 media?
>
> Paul
>
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