BRU Producer’s Edition by Tolis Supports LTFS

TOLIS Group, Inc. demonstrated and announced the availability of LTO-5 LTFS volume support in BRU Producer’s Edition at the 2011 NAB Show.

BRU Producer’s Edition version 2.3.0 provides native LTFS (Linear Tape Filesystem Support) for OS X users. LTFS allows the use of LTO-5 media as if it were a disk volume and provides a self-documenting format that is compatible with other platforms supporting the LTFS standard.

"LTFS is a natural extension to BRU PE and provides an additional mechanism for archiving entertainment media," said Bob Christ, TOLIS Group executive vice president. "Our customers have been hearing about LTFS for almost a year, and our team finally agrees that it is ready for implementation on the OS X platform."

While LTFS provides a mechanism for writing and reading data on LTO-5 volumes, once a volume is unmounted for storage, the system has no knowledge of the contents of the offline tape. BRU Producer’s Edition extends the usefulness of LTFS by providing the support needed to properly parse and search LTFS volumes, even if the media is currently offline or even offsite by maintaining local catalogs of known LTFS volumes.

LTFS makes tape more accessible and provides users with the ability to utilize standard file operations on LTO-5 tape media for accessing, managing and sharing files with an interface that behaves similar to a hard disk. Additionally, LTFS provides the ability to share data across platforms, similar to a Firewire or USB drive or USB flash drive. All that is required is to load an LTFS formatted tape into the compatible drive, mount it on the system, and the volume is seen by the system as a disk volume.

BRU Producers Edition provides a graphical interface. Formatting media, mounting and un-mounting volumes, and importing LTFS contents for offline browsing are provided by the BRU PE user interface.

BRU PE 2.3.0 is a free upgrade for existing BRU PE users.