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I still use LTO 5 tapes to back up my personal NAS because they are reliable, compact, and cheaper than cloud storage, which is slow and expensive for large photo and video files. Tape has helped me recover from a ransomware attack and from drive failures, with restores taking a few hours instead of weeks. While newer formats like LTO9 offer higher capacity, older drives are more practical for personal or small business use, and I plan to move my archives to LTO6 next year if I can find an affordable drive. My backup setup is just a PC with a SAS card, and tapes remain a more cost-effective and space-efficient option than portable hard drives.
Recovering data from LTO tapes depends on the tape version and the type of data loss. For business-level recovery, Stellar Data Recovery is a reliable option, while Hedge Canister works well for managing LTFS-formatted tapes. Free tools like GNU ddrescue and TestDisk can recover data for those comfortable with command-line operations. Iperius Backup provides a versatile solution for cross-platform tape backups. Choosing the right software comes down to the tape type, the extent of the damage, and whether ease of use or advanced recovery features is more important, with commercial tools generally offering better support for critical data.
LTO tape archiving stores data sequentially on high-capacity magnetic tapes for long-term backups and archival. Data is prepared, sometimes compressed or encrypted, and written in linear tracks with error-correction codes to ensure integrity. Since tape is sequential, retrieving data requires the drive to fast-forward or rewind, though indexing and catalogs make this faster. LTO tapes provide durability, large storage capacity, encryption, and WORM options. With automated tape libraries, even massive archives can be managed efficiently. Storing tapes in controlled conditions ensures they stay reliable for decades, making LTO a solid choice for long-term data storage.
Every time I try to install the Windows 11 update, it just fails. I’ve never had an issue upgrading a live Windows 10 system—I just unzip the ISO to a folder on the desktop and run the installer. A while back, I upgraded from Windows 7 Enterprise to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC without losing any data. It took some time and a few registry tweaks, but it worked perfectly.
I recently started installing Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC on the same machine using the same method. Everything went fine until I canceled right before the installation started. I’ll be upgrading this system from an X99 platform to Z690 soon, so it’ll need Windows 11 anyway for proper core scheduling.
HELP: I created a library/project on my NAS. Today, I just logged in and opened it, but the project is completely gone. How is this possible? How does this even happen?
A brief storm outage last night seems to have killed my Synology DS224+. Both drives appear to be working—I can see them in Disk Management using a docking station—but I can’t access the files in File Explorer to back them up.
The drives are two Seagate Iron Wolfs, 8TB and 12TB, both GPT, but no drive letters are assigned, and Disk Management doesn’t give the option to assign any. I’d like to avoid wiping the drives when I get a new NAS, as they contain hundreds of shows on Plex and other important files.
EDIT: It was just the power cable. Replaced it, the NAS is back, and I’m backing up all data to an external drive.
I have a DS423+ with three 20TB drives. I want to reserve 4TB for backing up files and documents in a RAID5 pool, and use the rest for ripped Blu-ray movies in RAID0, since I already have backups. Can I set it up this way, or do I need to dedicate whole drives to the RAID5 pool?
My 8TB external drive just crashed—APFS map got corrupted, but the data is still intact. All my Logic files are on it, and this is the second time it’s happened, so I’m weighing my options. I could get a new drive, copy the old drive to it, and then reformat the old one; use my other drives (8TB and 7TB) to temporarily upload up to 4TB to Rapidgator and then copy/format as needed; or set up a local cloud server, which I’ve never done before, so any tips would be helpful. What would you do, or would you approach it differently?
I still use LTO4 tapes to back up my personal NAS because cloud storage is expensive and slow for photography and video. Tape has saved me a couple of times—once after a ransomware attack on the NAS (external drives and cloud backups were also affected) and once after drive failures when the NAS was dropped.
Restoring from tape took about 5 hours, compared to over two weeks from the cloud, which would have cost $40 for 600GB. LTO9 looks good for bigger setups (18TB per tape), but older drives are common for personal or small business use. Next year, I plan to move my archives to LTO6 if I can find an affordable drive.
The backup server is just a PC with a SAS card and enough power. I thought about portable or shucked hard drives, but tapes are more compact and cheaper—around $25 for an 800GB LTO4.
Who else is still using tape?
Best software options for recovering data from LTO tapes?
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That would be perfect to recover the lost photos. But first one need to try the manual fixes.
Thanks Kael,
That’s important too.
That’s a good suggestion Genelia.
The smartest move is to first clone your corrupted 8TB drive onto a new, solid drive using a read-only method so you don’t risk losing anything. Once you’ve confirmed the clone is good, you can reformat the original drive and put it back into use. From here on out, don’t keep all your critical Logic projects on just one external drive. Using a local NAS or RAID setup, or keeping multiple copies on different drives, will help avoid running into this problem again. For long-term backup, setting up a local server like TrueNAS or Synology gives you incremental backups and built-in redundancy.