HP LTO5 Ultrium 3000 SAS Ext Tape Drive, Storageworks LTO-5 Ultrium 3000 SAS

Was a nightmare to setup and find right drivers and actually get working, could not get working with HP software, had to use Iperious Backup, but that works really well now with Iperious.

Don't be fooled by the description this seller gives, it is not a new machine but a "HP Sealed Spares unit", it doesn't include software or anything, just a letter from HP that says: "this replacemente tape drive has been sent to you to replace the HP StorageWorks tape drive that you have reported as having a fault".Of course the seller doesn't say that anywhere in the description...

I'm using this drive to backup 600+GB of data nightly. The LTO3 PowerEdge drive I was using, maxed out at 632gb. This drive is faster at backing up data than the LTO3 drive I had been using. What would normally take 5 hours to back up 630gb of data, now takes only 3 hours. I had to buy a SAS HBA PCIe card for my IBM Systemx M2 server. The drive comes with the SAS cable and a blank HP LTO5 tape, which will hold at least 1.5 TB of data. This is a low profile drive- half height I guess you would call it. I'm using Backup Exec 2010 for my backup restore jobs. I recommend you use the drivers provided by your own backup software. I was using the drivers that automatically loaded when the Add new Hardware Wizzard popped up when I attached the drive, but there were some anomolies in the backup process. The anomolies went away when I used the Backup Exec's drivers. The one thing I don't like about this drive is the loading process. You have to lift up the cover with one hand and insert the tape with the other hand. On my Powervault LTO3 drive, you would simply push the tape in with one hand. This drive is able to read LTO3 tapes. I have not tried writing to LTO3 tapes yet. According to the specs, you can Read LTO3 tapes, and R/W LTO 4/5 tapes.

Love this tape drive. It has taken our backups from 6 hours down to 1.5 hours per night. We have only had it installed for a couple of weeks but so far so good.

When the LTO-3 drive from Dell crapped out the 2nd time, it was time to find a replacement. LTO6 is fairly new and pricy, and we did not have that much data to back up, so the LTO5 was an easy choice. I chose the external drive because I wanted it outside the server, running on its own power supply. The hardware based encryption also means faster backups if you need to turn on encryption.The drive came with power cable, a very short (1 meter?) SAS male-male cable, and a blank HP LTO5 tape. There was a piece of paper instructing me to download the latest software and drivers from HP.I purchased an SAS HBA 6Gbps card from Dell to go into a PowerEdge T420 server. I did not want any potential compatibility issues, so I went with a Dell card.The process of the install was super easy. After shutting down the server and unplugging the power, I found an empty PCIe slot, plugged in the card, rebooted the server and let it recognize the new hardware/card, rebooted the server again, plugged in the drive, installed the driver for the drive that I downloaded from HP, and that was it.Running BackupAssist 8.2.0 did not require that I use any special drivers, unlike it's often the case with Symantec's BackupExec. I have been getting about 130 GB/hr throughput running uncompressed and unencrypted backups over a Gigabit network. Backing up the .vhd to tape is now often FASTER than backing up to the NAS using Link Aggregation.I am very happy overall with the decision to go with this tape drive, and would not hesitate to do so again given our situation.