Mount / Unmount Tape


If a generation compatible formatted LTFS tape is placed in the Symply LTO drive, depressing the Mount button will mount the LTFS volume in the operating system. If a formatted LTFS tape is mounted, the button will show Unmount, depressing the button will unmount the tape and remove it from the operating system and eject the tape.

 

The Mount operation may fail if:

  • There is no tape in the tape drive
  • The tape is not formatted with the LTFS format
  • The tape in the drive is not of a compatible generation ex. LTO-6 tape in LTO-9 drive

 

If the tape in the drive is incompatible, for example an unsupported generation for the drive, then the Single Character Display (SCD) on the front of the drive will display “J”.

 

The Unmount operation may fail if there is not a tape in the drive, or if the tape has been unmounted using the operating system specific functions rather than using the SymplyATOM Unmount button. If this has occurred, you may resynchronize SymplyATOM by depressing the unmount button, or by re-selecting the tape drive in the left hand information window of SymplyATOM under the heading Drives Found.

 

Copying data to a tape can only be done when the tape is mounted. Then it is just a case of dragging the data to the tape’s icon using Finder on macOS or Windows Explorer on Windows. It is important to note that LTFS doesn’t support a small range of characters and attempting to copy files/folders which contain these so-called illegal characters: * ? < > “ | \ will result in a failed copy operation.


IMPORTANT: Applications such as Hedge Canister and YoYotta automatically handle illegal characters, swapping them for valid characters on tape and replacing them upon restoration of the data to non-LTFS media.

 

 

If you have any questions please submit a [support ticket]