LTO-tape-backup

LTO technology allows to store large amounts of data on magnetic tapes with a very low cost per GB.

The LTO tapes are now widely used especially in big data environments, where databases and virtualization require high capacity storage media, reliability and performances. The estimated duration of the media is about 30 years, which makes LTO tapes perfectly suitable for the storage of long-term data.

Iperius Backup allows you to save data to any LTO Ultrium tape drive, with capacities ranging from 100 GB up to 12 TB (which can be also increased thanks to the hardware compression). Iperius can then cover the backup needs of entire companies, with the maximum safety and speed and at a very low cost.

The Iperius license that allows to make tape backup is the Advanced Tape, at €146 (even for servers). License is perpetual and there is no annual renewal cost. Support and updates are completely free.

Iperius Backup Advanced Tape also includes the following important features:

  1. Full, incremental and differential backups, with compression and encryption
  2. Backup to Cloud: Google Drive, Amazon S3, Dropbox, OneDrive.
  3. System image backup: you can create disk images to restore the entire system even on dissimilar hardware
  4. Online backup FTP/FTPS/SFTP, with synchronization (deletion of old files), compression and encryption
  5. Backup and synchronization to any mass storage device (USB, NAS, RDX, etc.)
  6. Open file backup (VSS): you can copy locked or in-use files, such us mailboxes, virtual machines and databases

How to make a tape backup with Iperius:

Create a new backup job.

tape-backup-00

First you’ve to choose the items you want to back up, so select files and folders you want to copy on tape:

In the next panel (“Destinations”), click on the button circled by red in the image below to add a tape drive as a backup destination:

Select the tape drive to be used (you can have multiple tape drives installed on your server/workstation). Iperius can make multiple backups on different tape drives, even simultaneously.

The recommended block size is the default one. The maximum block size might help to obtain a better speed, while the minimum value allows to save some space on the tape.

Iperius also supports hardware compression, that allows to save space and increase the tape capacity. However, the compression rate depends on different factors, such as the average compressibility of files. For example, if you’re backing up only already-compressed files, such as JPEG images, compression won’t have any efficacy.

You can also choose the backup type (full, incremental, differential), to create a more complex backup strategy, keeping an history of file changes on multiple tapes. You will have a tape containing the full backup, and several tapes containing incremental or differential backups. However, for common or long-term data storage operations, the recommended mode is the full one.

Among the other options, you can also encrypt your backup, making it inaccessible to unauthorized users. An encrypted tape backup can be restored only knowing the encryption password.

Once you configured the various options, click OK to save the destination. In the next panel, you’ve some other options for your backup job. Generally you can leave them to their default values:

In the next panel, you can configure the scheduling, to run the backup automatically at specific days and times, the email notifications and the external scripts or programs to be executed before and/or after the backup.

In the final panel, you’ve to specify the backup job name and click “OK” to save it.

You can immediately run the backup right-clicking on it.

You can compare the various Iperius editions in this page.

Click here to buy Iperius Backup Advanced Tape

Update to support LTO-7 tape drives in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Server 2012:

On Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, you may need an hotfix to properly support the LTO 7 tape drives. Here is the link to the Microsoft site where to download it: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3095711

 

Note on LTO6 support on Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2:

Even on these systems may need a Microsoft hotfix to correctly support LTO 6 tape drives: https://support.microsoft.com/en-en/kb/2619836

 

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Backup to Tape LTO with Iperius. The simple and secure software.
Iperius Backup Team
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PLEASE NOTE: if you need technical support or have any sales or technical question, don't use comments. Instead open a TICKET here: https://www.iperiusbackup.com/contact.aspx

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Comments

  1. Sonam Nyangpo

    Hello. Im testing your Software with an Tandberg LTO 6 HH Drive uner Windows 7 X64. Usually on a Tape Backup there will be a Dialouge wich ask for a new Tape when its Full. But in this Case the Job aborts with this Entry in the Log :

    ————————————————————————————————————————–
    Backup starten: 17.04.2015 17:16:04

    Bandsicherung starten – Tandberg Data LTO-6 drive (TAPE0)

    Backup-Typ: Vollständig

    Element: E:\

    Fehler: Generischer Fehler beim Schreiben auf Band : Physisches Ende des Bandes erreicht. Backup kann unvollständig oder beschädigt sein. (Die Bandendemarke wurde erreicht)

    Zeitaufwand: 0 Stunden, 9 Minuten, 60 Sekunden

    Größe der kopierten Daten: 31.7 GB

    Backup-Verifizierung erfolgreich

    Fehler: Bandsicherung mit Fehlern abgeschlossen

    362 bearbeitete Dateien – 0 Fehler

    Bandsicherung beendet

    Backup abgeschlossen: 17.04.2015 17:26:27

    —————————————————————————————————————————

    Any suggestions how to solve this Problem? On the other Hand your App is pretts Quick and Simple.

    Regards

    Sonam

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hi,

      there is most probably a tape drive malfunction, since only 31.7 GB have been written to the tape. Please check your tape drive health status using the Tandberg test tool, then update drivers and firmware using the same tool. Finally, try also with a different cartridge.

      1. Juergen Weinmann

        I have the same issue for a HP LTO Ultrium 3 drive. The backups fail after writing less than 200 GB. I tried several different compression settings. But still no luck …

        In addition to that, I wanted to do a full backup once a week (e.g. Sunday) and incremental backups subsequently on one tape per week (was supported with NTBackup). This seems to be impossible on the same tape, because it’s always overwritten? Since I’ve integrated Iperius Backup into an own wrapper using the command line, would it be possible to realize that? If yes, how? Are there additional command line Parameters than “startbackup”?

        Thanks.

  2. Sam Deeljore

    When testing your software, the data set was about 4 TB, and the tape is an LTO-6. Compression was enabled, and it wrote 3.1 TB to the tape, but instead of prompting for a new tape, it exited with the error:

    Error: Generic error during tape writing: : The physical end of the tape has been reached. The backup may be incomplete or corrupted. (The physical end of the tape has been reached)

    Is there a setting which will make sure that it will ask for a new tape?

    Thank you,

    Sam

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hi, splitting a backup over multiple tapes is not supported by Iperius. LTO 6 can store 2,5 TB natively on a single tape, so 3,1 TB is a good result thanks to the integrated compression. The best way to organize your backups is to create different backup jobs for different cartridges. You can set a specific option to avoid overwriting tapes created by a different job.

      1. Brian Priebe

        If you are advertising this product as a replacement for such as Backup Exec, then you MUST support tape spanning.

  3. Rui Meleiro

    Given the answers above, I think my question is already answered, but – Do you have there any current or planned support for tape libraries? We have been able to test Iperius on VTL, but loading tapes would have to be done on the appliance.

      1. Markus

        Do you have a roadmap for that ? I expect a Tape-library Support for a solution as Imperius as “given” an am quiet surprised in reading that it does not yet !

        Please inform !

          1. Dennis Dumas

            Hi, Can you please tell me if Tape Library support already is supported? I see a few years ago the same question came along, but didn’t see any news.

            Regards,
            Dennis

  4. Pino

    Hello, i’m using LTO-3 Tape to backup myfile.

    But i have a trouble on append backup file.

    When I execute backup, I don’t want overwrite tape.

    Until this tape is full, i will change new Tape.

    How can i setup?

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hello,

      you cannot append multiple backups to the same tape. Iperius always rewinds and overwrites the tape. If you want to keep multiple incremental backups, the only way is to use multiple tapes, or to keep this backup on disk, and copy it to the tape after a certain period.

  5. Craig

    Hi, can you backup multi sessions to tape? Will it continue where it left off and continue to write to remaining free space? Or will it erase current tape backup?

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hello,

      it’s not possible to appen multiple backups to the same tape. Iperius Always rewinds and overwrites the tape. If you want to keep multiple incremental backups, the only way is to use multiple tapes, or to keep this backup on disk, and copy it to the tape after a certain period.

  6. Emmanuel

    I am using LTO 5 SAS Tape Drive and I am new to Tape Backup. I need answers to the below questions and any other things that can help me:

    How can I make my Tape to be accessible on My Computer?

    It is also possible to have it as a mapped drive on My Computer?

    How can I erase information on my cartridge?

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hi,

      no, it is not possible to map a tape drive on the network.
      Iperius can write on tape drives installed on the same computer where it is running.
      However, Iperius can take data from other computers through network shares.

      Iperius hasn’t a specific feature to erase tapes, since it always overwrite tapes at each backup.

  7. benny

    Hi,
    i have a directory with 400 sub-directory – total size 5TB.
    i want to backup it to LTO5 backup tape – i want to split it to 2 backup jobs.
    is there a way to select the sub-directory from the list and not one by one?

  8. marwan

    Hi there.

    Dear Team Imperius,

    Im interested to buy your software.
    Where I can purchased one, for Indonesian country?

    Sincerely
    Marwan

  9. Ricardo

    Please we are receiving the following error message writing LTO3 tape, 300GB, compression and no compression was tried. In a brand new tape media and the unit head was cleaned.

    We were unable to find error messages explanation and probable causes. Please can you advice

    !Error: Generic error writinf tape: 23 – Data error (cyclic redundancy check)”

    Thanks

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hi,

      you’re right, but unfortunately, mainly for the development of our new remote support software (www.iperiusremote.com), the development of full tape library support has been delayed.

      1. Terry Speicher

        Tape Libraries – I saw an earlier entry in this thread dating back to 2015 saying that support for tape libraries was coming soon. Hate to rush you.

        But if you aren’t going to do it, can you just say so?

        -Terry

        1. Iperius Team

          Hi,

          In these years we worked on other features and improvement inside the software so unfortunately the tape library has been postpone.
          However will be release, but not in a near future.

          For more technical support open a ticket on https://support.iperius.net

  10. Tim

    Hi,

    I’m about to implement a storage/backup solution and I’m looking for the software I need to run this.

    I intend to setup a QNAP TS-431 NAS unit and I also intend to use an IBM TS-2900 LTO3/4 Tape Library which has SAS and Ethernet interfaces. The intention is to use the NAS for general day-to-day storage and to back this up periodically to the Tape Library via Ethernet – this will mean the 2 devices do not necessarily need to share the same physical location.

    My question is: will Imperius do this for me? I’d prefer to use Ethernet for the backup, although if I can’t find any software to do this I might have to buy an additional SAS interface for one of the machines.

    Tim

  11. Mohamed Rashad

    I was taking backup of 4 files of total size: 137 GB on a DAT 160 tape, it finished with the following error in log:
    Error: Generic error during tape writing: : The physical end of the tape has been reached. The backup may be incomplete or corrupted. (1100 – The physical end of the tape has been reached) (27/12/2016 6:20:27 PM)
    Time taken: 3 Hours, 31 Minutes, 20 Seconds
    Size of copied data: 95.6 GB
    Error: Tape backup completed with errors (27/12/2016 6:22:16 PM)
    2 Processed files – 0 errors
    End tape backup

    please advise

    1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

      Hi,

      please consider that the physical/native size of a DAT 160 tape is 80 GB.
      Although the vendor shows the 160 GB compressed value, in real scenarios is difficult to reach a 1:2 compression, especially if you have a lot of uncompressible files to be backed up.

      In your case, you have perhaps a lot of small files, that require more space, an many uncompressible files, so only a little compression has been made. You’ve stored 15 GB more than the native capacity anyway.

  12. Alessandro Ponzo

    I’m testing your software to purchase for video files log term backup.
    How does the software verify if the files have been copied correctly?
    Does the software correct for error occurred during the file transfer?
    Thank you.

  13. Azis

    hi, can you show me step by step how to backup by overwrite tape backup, I use LTO 6.
    I have tried but still error.
    here’s log error :

    Backup start: 11/4/2017 8:00:21 PM
    Starting tape backup – (TAPE0)

    Error: Current settings don’t allow to overwrite tape backups before a certain number of days. If you want to overwrite the tape, you have to modify the tape destination options. (11/4/2017 8:00:44 PM)

    0 Processed files – 0 errors
    End tape backup
    Backup end: 11/4/2017 8:00:44 PM

    please advice.

  14. David

    Want to take image backup of both my drives to a tape destination.

    BUT the dialog to choose what to backup has select C: drive as to be backed up and D: drive as destination even though I’ve selected a Tape destination????

    What am I doing wrong

    1. Iperius Team

      Hi,

      The tape library support it’s a feature that will be added in the next releases of Iperius Backup, it should be ready next year.

  15. Kevin Tangeman

    Regarding setting file or folder exclusions in Iperius Backup – Advanced Tape, I was told this last May 2018 that wildcards are not allowed in the path but that this would be added into the next releases. When is this ability to use wildcards going to be available?

  16. Most

    Considering your software as a BE alternative.
    Couple of simple questions.

    If I perform a backup of a local Drive D containing 1Tb of data (NOT backing up the SERVER2016 OS) to LTO6 tape (400Mbps compressed), will it complete in one 8 hour session? Normal data, Folder with EXCEL, WORD, PST, TXT files.
    Normal stuff, no Apps.

    Also; can I retrieve a single file or single folder from the tape, and redirect the restore to a new folder?

    Thanks

    1. Iperius Team

      Hi,

      Generally, it’s not possible to determine when the backup execution ends, however you can get a try downloading our software and activate the Trail period of 21 days: https://www.iperiusbackup.net/en/can-try-iperius-backup-advanced-features.

      Concerning the second question, yes, it’s possible to restore a simple file or folder from the tape backup, also to another destination different from the original one.

      For more technical support, please open a ticket on https://support.iperius.net/.

  17. DaveB

    I am looking at Iperius as a replacement for Yosemite but for it to be effective…. I need loader / library support. Any news on it??

    1. Iperius Team

      Hi,

      Currently Iperius Backup doesn’t support auto-loader and tape library. Probably in future we will introduce the spanning of data in order that Iperius will continue copying data to the next tape available.

      For more technical support ope a ticket on https://support.iperius.net

      1. Emerson

        Hi,
        Do you have any update of when tape spanning will be implemented?

        I agree with an older post that this is an essential function.

        1. Iperius Backup Team Article Author

          Hello, unfortunately we had to delay this feature to give more priority to some other key features. Currently I cannot give you a precise deadline for the release of this feature. However, we did not abandone it.

  18. webwiz355

    Are you saying now that Iperius Backup “DOES” support “tape spanning” now, only if the tapes are switched manually????

    Thats the very reason I had to quit using Iperius… no manual tape spanning.
    Everything else worked great…

    1. Iperius Team

      Hi,

      We are sorry but we were very busy in developing many other features of the software with higher priority. The tape library support is in our road-map and will be added in the future releases of the software, however not in a near future. So, currently, since Iperius doesn’t yet support the automatic tape loading, the backup will work if the tapes of the library are switched manually.

      For more technical support please open a ticket on https://support.iperius.net.

      1. webwiz355

        OK, Im sorry.. the question is, will the program fill a tape and then prompt me for another tape for “Manual” switch to continue and complete backup ??

        1. Iperius Team

          Hi,

          Currently Iperius doesn’t support this feature, if the end of tape is reached the software notifies an error.
          Probably in future this feature will be added.

  19. Toni

    Hello, I’m using Iperius with and HP LTO-2 tape, but I don’t have any hardware compression? It it checked in the tape drive settings but it has no effect (I do understand that only certain files can be compressed).
    I tried using a file which I know can be compressed but it’s not when used with Iperius.

    And why is the program forcing you to use ZIP compression (even high speed) if the drive supports hardware compression? I think there should be an option to disable the zip compression since it’s using the CPU for nothing.

  20. Denis

    Hi Iperius,
    Since Microsoft decided to remove NTbackup from their O/Ses (a long time ago), I benchmarked most of tape backup tools on the market (Yosemite, BackupAssist, Acronis, EaseUS, Paragon, Uranium… even older solutions such as Arcserve, BackupExec, Sytos or TSM).
    I recently bought Iperius tape backup for my personal use, because I think Iperius tape backup is the easiest / most affordable to use tool for personal / small business tape backups in Windows environments.
    BUT, like some other people on this page, i really think that it misses an important feature : ability to create large backup over multiple tapes.
    Today, tape size is often smaller than storage size. Iperius tape backup is fine to backup (full, incremental) a subset of a large disk, but why can’t we use it to make a simple full backup of a large drive or NAS ? I’m pretty sure making a monthly full backup of a 10TB NAS over a bunch of 3-4 LTO5 is a common requirement.
    Don’t you Iperius guys plan to add this functionality to future versions? It would be great!

    1. Iperius Team

      Hi,

      Thank you for your comment.

      Yes, we have in our roadmap to add this functionality, we were busy on developing many other features in the software in the last months so this feature has been postponed. Probably in future we will add it , but not in a near future.

      For more technical support open a ticket on https://support.iperius.net

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PLEASE NOTE: if you need technical support or have any sales or technical question, don't use comments. Instead open a TICKET here: https://www.iperiusbackup.com/contact.aspx

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