Windows 10: Tape backup software for Windows 10

OK I've got external HDDs, but not enough to store all my systems, so I have an HP Ultrium 460 LTO tape drive.

What software do you recommend for tape bckup on Windows 10? I tried Easeus Todo backup trial but that was painfully slow. Acronis Advanced Backup is rather expensive, and has a rep for being buggy. Symantec Backup Exec is also $$$ and needs a Windows Server to install so that doesn't work either.

I'm looking for backup to tape (or D2D2T) with a "bare metal restore" capability, freeware would be good, but I'm not averse to payware! What do the mavens here recommend?

Thanks a lot,
Dave

:)

 

Multiple "File History" volumes?

Greetings,

Back in the mainframe days, one alternated three backup volumes, i.e., magnetic tapes.

In this way, if a backup volume failed, one could recover most of the data using the previously-created backup and minimize data loss.

For example: Monday-DriveA, Tuesday-DriveB, Wednesday-DriveC, Thursday-DriveA, Friday-DriveB, Saturday-DriveC, Sunday-DriveA, Monday-DriveB, ....

With File History enabled in Windows 10, can one successfully attach a different external disk each day?

If not, I'd welcome suggestions of Backup/Restore software which supported alternating volumes.

 

Converting analog music to digital in Windows 10

I used to have Windows Plus which enabled me to convert vinyl and cassette tapes to digital music. Unfortunately when I updated my computer to Windows 10 I could not use this software. Is there similar software available that is compatible with Windows
10 Home version?

 

I did not use backup payware , I use Easeus Todo Backup Free, I've been using it several years with several PCs and have had no issues with the freeware ,so I mention it FWIW.

 

According to the quick spec sheet I read about that unit no matter what software you use its going to be painfully slow

Source:
hp StorageWorks Ultrium 460 Tape Drive - World Wide QuickSpecs

 

Maybe not a zippy as an LTO-6 drive but still plenty fast for me - typical data rate I was getting with an old release of Acronis ABR was 30-110MB/s typically around 50MB/s. When I said painfully slow, I meant about 10-20% of that on average (often sat there not talking to the tape drive at all, while ABR would stream continuously).

Dave

 

Hi there

second that as well.

Either you'll have to buy very expensive professional tape systems or IMO much cheaper to go for USB3 external drives or even sata. In theory you could get 6GB/sec (assuming your HDD's and I/O bus on the mobo could handle it.

Large capacity HDD's are reasonably cheap these days -- how much data are you talking about here as 12 TB of fast(ish) HDD space will be a LOT cheaper than a professional grade tape backup system with a whole slew of cartridges.

Windows or Linux can both handle fast backups if the mobo and peripherals are capable. Your problem is more likely to be hardware related than software.

Don't forget also if you are backing up FROM HDD's then slow HDD's with slow read times etc will kill any tape backup system -- the tape has to wait for the HDD whereas you can get away with slowish HDD's on HDD-->HDD backup.

That's why commercial banks etc pay top dollar for very fast SCSI HDD's etc and use dedicated backup servers. Typical consumer grade HDD's are no good if you want to backup to tape -- not unless you are creating the world's first Y3K (year 3000 !!) project because that's how long it will take once you start backing up several TB of data with slow peripherals and a domestic / consumer grade computer system.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Me - slow HDDs - not a chance - I use SAS 15K HDDs on the desktops and SSD + 7200 SATA in the lappie.

BTW, the SATA bandwidth is NOT 6GB/s it is 6Gb/s (gigabits/second). This translates to a peak transfer rate of around 300MB/s from an SSD and up to around 130MB/s maximum from a 7200 SATA HD. So my "slow" LTO tape pretty much keeps up with the disks.

Dave

 

Whatever software you decide upon should also include a feature to create a bootable disc to comply with the "bare metal restore" desire. Also involved is whether the computer uses the BIOS or UEFI boot process as the software needs to support it. There's probably more to it but I tried to keep it simple. I gave up on my Colorado Tape Backup system after going to Windows 95 but it worked fine for MS-DOS with Windows 3.1 albeit slow. It did come with a bootable floppy disk for restoring to a formatted but empty drive.

 

Macrium Reflect Free is about twice as fast as Easeus Todo.

It supports differential backups as well ie you only need to backup changes since last full backup. You can schedule the backups.

If you have a lot of data, you should really have it on a different drive to OS and programs, then you only need to image backup os drive say weekly or monthly.

Then use file history backup to backup data drive (to an external drive if you like), and do this automatically. First time will take a while, but thereafter it is quick as it only backs up incremental changes.

 

Hi there

confused with difference between 6GB/s and 6Gb/s aren't they both 6 gigabits / sec. Anyway that's what I meant. !!

The actual problem I think you have is that the system isn't buffering up the data read from the HDD's enough so once the tape system has to wait for I/O you are basically stuffed -- tape has to stop, reposition etc etc or it wil just skip data until the next block from the HDD is ready.

I'd suggest you have a look at how some of these cloud / other commercial servers do their backups -- a robust tape system won't be cheap. Not sure if you could get anything like 200 mb/s data transfer rate on to an LTO cartridge.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Hard to take your reply seriously if you do not know difference betweem GB and Gb.

FYI

B=byte

b=bit.

and

1 byte equals 8 bits.

 

Hi there.

Bits and Bytes isn't confusing --however what can be is a capital or lower case single letter meaning totally different things -- it's very easy to mix lower and upper case accidentally especially when typing on those stupidly small "virtual keypads" on mobile phones with large fingers .

Anyway if you read the content of the reply you should be able to see that it makes sense. The whole point -- whatever the units you are dealing with is to say that if the I/O speed of your HDD together with the data transfer speed isn't fast enough for the tape (or vice versa) then you'll have problems -- and in general domestic type computers don't have sufficiently fast / optimised I/O buses for the type of operations you want to do..

Cheers
jimbo

 

Yeah, I had a bit of trouble getting my mind around octals and bits and Bytes back in the '80s when learning about computing. The b for bits and B for Bytes has been around quite awhile.

The best use I've seen with tape backup was on a computer running 2 Pentium Pro CPUs on a motherboard in a Server and using DAT [Digital Audio] tapes.

 

First of all, does that HP Ultrium 460 LTO provide a real up-to-date drivers for Windows 10? The link you provide shows specs dated 2002. Also you may check these guys at Ultrabac: Supported Operating Systems | UltraBac Software Hardware Compatibility List for UltraBac and UBDR Gold I used their software in late 90s with a HP tape drive under Windows NT.