MagStor LTO-8 Drive With Thunderbolt 3 Interface and myLTO Software

When storage is a serious matter, when quantity and reliability are required, over-the-top solutions are needed, such as the one proposed by MagStor.

LTO TRB3-HL8 drive

Data transfer rates up to 300MB/s, media containing up to 12TB of uncompressed files (30TB  with 2.5: 1 compression), for a shelf life of over 30 years.

All of this is offered by the unit proposed by the company with the hardware-software bundle myLTO + MagStor LTO-8, for sale at $5,999. A ‘modern’ storage system, yet based partly on ancient technology (that of LTO tape cassettes, here in the latest generation version, Ultrium LTO-8), partly on an up-to-date interface, namely Thunderbolt 3 (with two front connections). The latter, in fact, offers frightening speeds, up to 40Gb/s, or twice the previous version 2, and the quadruple of the Thunderbolt 1. For a comparison, remember the values for the USB world: 2.0, 480Mb/s; 3.0, 5Gb/s; 3.1, 10Gp/s.

myLTO screenshot
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The devices equipped with Thunderbolt 3 are backward compatible with previous generations of this technology (if necessary, you can use the Apple MMEL2AM/A adaptor for conversions) accessible by the firm’s drive.

In addition, it is possible to loop through to connect other Thunderbolt 3 devices, such as RAID drives, without losing bandwidth.

Quiet operation, vibration-free, and the practical form factor make the drive for storage on trolleys, on the set, or in the post-production room; among other things, the unit does not need an external power supply (the circuits are integrated in the container).

The pressence in the dock of a standard 3.5” hot-swapped HDD SATA allows you to read or write on HDD with the myLTO application (included) of Imagine Products, an option that can be used for example to make an additional copy files on a HDD at the same time as tape storage.

In any case, to archive ‘soon and well’, just use myLTO; no additional converter, power supply or driver to install or configure.

MagStor drive and myLTO take advantage of the LTFS: this mounts the tape as a HDD in the OS, and optimizes the tape writing and recovery functions.

The LTO-8 tape drive is compatible with Mac and Windows ‘Thunderbolt-1/2/3 Enabled‘.

Computer system requirements (for myLTO): Macintosh OS X 10.13, 10.12, 10.11 or 10.10.