DL088 - Dell TL-2000 Tape Library & LTO-3 Tape Drive Teardown
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- In this video i teardown an IBM LTO-3 Tape Drive and take a quick look at a Dell TL-2000 LTO Tape Library.
The library i bought as non-working with a robotic fault, it appears as though it had maybe been dropped and there was some damage to the robot and other plastics. These i repaired, the library will be going off to a new home to have an LTO-5 or LTO-6 drive putting in. The old LTO-3 drive is removed and i tear it down.
LTO (Linear Tape Open)
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Tape Libraries
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dexterslab2013....
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Email address can be found on my RUclips Channel About page.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh, that pile of parts at the end just brought a tear to my eye. What a well put together machine. Just wish our old VCR units were built as well.
Watching this in 2019. Very interesting look inside the operation of these drives. I kind of figured there was a grab mechanism to pull the tape out but I thought there was a handoff to the take-up spool where it locked the pin - I would never have imagined that the grab hook goes into the spool and actually spins with the tape.
Those tape drive mechanisms are also far better built and more durable than any 2.5 inch hard drive including RDX. You pay a pretty sum for all those machined bearings, exotic plastics, built-in error correction and that massive head.
I just purchased an external LTO drive for my media server backup. My enormous 512 disc binder of DVD movies all fit on a single LTO6 tape - that's' a massive space savings right there.
No capstan/pinch roller. Speed is regulated by tracking data encoded on the tape. The motors are 3 phase sensored brushless motors rather than stepper motors. 1 motor runs in braking mode to manetane tension while the other motor pulls. Imagine if this kind of software defined transport existed when audio tape was just invented.
Interesting ! Would you happen to have more info/documentation on servicing/fixing LTO drives ?
lord...i remember being the guy that had to "do tapes". The wait for that thing to do its thing and unlock the caddies was brutal at the end of the day:)
Where I work, Veritas does all the work of managing the tapes. The only interaction I have is asking it to unlock the drawer from the front panel and boxing them up for the offsite storage and putting in a replacement set. So as long as it doesn't need to change tapes, a backup can be running while I do it. Then I go back to my desk and tell Veritas to run an inventory and it adds the new tapes to the backup pool. Ours is not this one though. It's made by Overland and has 6 drives inside.
I love the little arms on the robot thing
Wow, SIX motors in one drive! Interesting and impressive! Even my DLP TV has 3 motors and one more electromechanical part (the DMD, but which isn't motorized).
These tape libraries and drives are the the standard on the systems I work on. The ones I install are the IBM TS3100. The systems they connect to are called Power systems i5 O/S.
I just get them hooked up and operational. Pretty interesting to see inside. Thanks!
At 13:30 you say that the two motors should "run at the same speed". If you think about it, they will only run at the same speed when you are reading the mid-point of the tape. The rest of the time the two motors will run at different speeds to account for the fact that each revolution of the "full" spool pulls more tape than a full revolution of the "empty" spool.
**vp
yes you are correct, must have been a brain to mouth dysfunction!
Whichever spool is 'supplying' the tape to the other runs at a fractionally slower speed to keep the correct tension along the entirety of the tape.
I love how you went from "not sure what that is" to "reduces the air-bearing effect on the roller"....
It's sad that these things are so extremely expensive, they would make a nice backup solution for home equipment and lots of data.
I want one. I dont need it, and I really dont have anywhere to put it or anything useful to do with it, but I want it because it looks cool. That is another interesting thing. Here we are with super advanced SSDs that can hold terabytes and access that data extremely fast, and I want a tape drive library that uses technology invented 20-30 years ago. I know you said that this particular tape library was made in 2008, but that is still 8 years ago.
While they offer great performance, SSD's are just not that interesting to look at, these mechanical tape loaders are very addictive to look at :P
As someone working on a Computer Science Degree to get into the IT field. What kind of positions work with tape backup systems. I find this very fascinating and something I am considering as a hobby project to get some experience with for now plus it seems like a really cool format. I love that this kind of system exists that was way too cool. That opening sequence was so amazing to see this in action.
Sysadmins at large companies I think
@@imeakdo7 Thank you I’ll look into that.
IT infrastructure people at smaller places, larger places will have people or teams dedicated to storage, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
Hi, thank you for the video. And the great subtitles. It helps me to learn new words. I was hoping to see more details of the controller card, and the power supply. Anyways, a big thumbs up. Happy to see you again.
+Max Koschuh I wanted to concentrate on the drive. The controller used an ARM based Atmel microcontroller of some description, the library does have a web interface to configure it so it must be reasonably powerful. The PSU looked very generic.
Very expansive Lesson on tape storage drive
thanks Sir!
That's an absolutely insane amount of silicon on that control board. I understand now why these drives cost as much as they do. Yet I can't help but wonder why they'd need such huge amounts of logic. Have they just implemented everything on huge FPGAs due to volumes being too low, or what? It would have been interesting if you had gotten close-ups of the chip markings.
It seems there are no FPGAs on the drive. There is an SH-4 processor in it. Maybe tape has a poor signal to noise ratio
Now that was neato! Thank you for this video. Always wanted to see automated back up systems in action.
Hm, I cringed inside as he showed the pile of broken parts at 28:21 ... I can't even afford a LTO2 drive and here one was destroyed :P
Like the new intro Marc! Great video as always :) always look forward to new uploads, keep up the top work.
Jason
+Jason558 Thanks!
Fascinating! Thanks for presenting!
Never knew or heard about these things. Thanks, interesting video.
New intro was great Marc. Need to do that myself one day...Enjoyed the tear down. Very interesting piece.
+The Radio Shop Thanks Buddy, i'm sure you could do a nice intro with a tuning dial or something appropriate to radios?
+DextersLab2013 Interesting idea marc. I may just play around with that idea! Thanks
I think I like the DLT mechanism a lot more. It uses a leader that's permanently attached to the takeup reel and has a hook at the end. No elaborate, articulated takeup mechanism like you see here.
You should get a cheapie RC ESC 3-phase motor drive and see if you can run these motors!
Should be pretty straightforward.
Oh, and regarding the noise - all enterprise & server gear manufacturers have a secret minimum noise requirement. If it's not noisy, it isn't worthy of being in a rack.
+Spirit Ooh, good call, i should have a brushless ESC somewhere!
10:00 This part saved my life!
Hi! Weird question, but where does the stuff you've done a sort of destructive disassembly end up once it's all in bits?
very interesting. I have worked on a storage library unit design myself.
Interesting, would you happen to have stories about it ? Or any documentation/general servicing tips ? I own a VCR servicing book but I'm unable to find such resource for LTO drives.
@@jonas-fr Hi. I worked on the library unit (the robotics). The tape drives were installed in the library and designed by another company. It's over 12 years ago.
@@bwack Thanks for your reply anyway !
How interesting. Learning is cool.
Regarding the drive being standard form-factor, I wonder if libraries already come with the drive sled, such that one can use external drives from any manufacturer, take out the internal drive from them and use them on a library. Though, I suppose that LDI ports are probably absent from such drives and possibly different between manufacturers. There might also be differences in tape entrance placement, etc.
At 12:08 you say you don't know what it is doing. It is quickly calibrating the tape head after loading the tape.
These are still used to backup servers, right? Different generation I'm assuming. SSD's I've heard do not retain their data forever whereas a tape can be run after a couple decades and still retrieve good data.
Yeah, but the servers would be running Linux or some other UNIX-like OS, so they wouldn't get ransomware anyways. Still, it keeps people from destroying important data, accidentally or not.
It is a pity that one of the motors didn't sound good, if it was it could be put together again!
Nice tear down! Now put it back together and make it work!
Great Video, Thank you, all i need to know now is what is fault that this drive export tapes that are marked as "Bad Tapes" from my TL-4000.....
How do I upgrade mine? Is there a firmware update needed for such a upgrade?
I though the two motors doesn't work at the same time? One to unreel the tape to the spool, and the one under the tape drive is to reel back the tape.
I wonder why the reels in the cartridge where not stacked like in the Philips NV1500 VCR and using a rotary video R/W head to enable the reading of data from tape and writing updated data back to the tape.
Will probably be to reduce overall size so more can be crammed into an autoloader or tape library at the same time.
awesome intro.
+Daniel Rowe I seem to be setting a trend for myself by using tapes!
it's adorable i want one
hello please help with such a problem on the tape what is the error and how to fix it F3 01 SCD: 5 ?
Why not use barcode
Because robotic arm is moving, which is changing thinks of barcodes
The solution is actually very neat
Poor Tapedrive "tape streamer" he had so much to offer.
I think there were still enough people who wanted to take over for a small amount.
I would like to buy a LTO 6 or 7 Tapestreamer. Unfortunately, for the consumer, it is unpayable. $ 5000,- to $ 7000,-
than $150,- to $200,- voor a tape.
It remains beautiful technique.
Is it possible to use a drive designed for tape library without tape library?
I don't know, some have suggested the firmware for the library drives is different to the standard drives.
Bit late but yes, it is possible. HP built drives should be fine whatever library they are out of. IBM built drives are sometimes ok but anything out of a Quantum I6000 or Qualstar RLS/XLS (and anything SAS, that'll be the 'P' error that was encountered when initially powering up the drive) will have to have the drive's topology changed. That's possible if you can rs232 into the serial port and communicate with putty or something similar.
what the actual crap... this drive is pretty much awesome.
We should collectively employ that on a human level
It keeps getting better and better. I don't know why I like watching this type of thing but it's so awesome to me. It's funny because I understand it, and it's amusing because this guy narrating is pretty much kicking ass.
B uenas tarde tengo un lector de LTO6 que a veces deja de leer y escribir hay alguna forma de reaizar mantenimiento o que se puede hacer para dejaro operativo gracias
Hmm. If that tape drive has a built-in barcode scanner, then it's probably a laser scanner.
if you didn´t put it back together while making it work again then you should die VERY SLOWLY AND IN EXCRUCIATING PAIN !! cuz the computer gods do not allow such atrocities to go unpunished.. if you had assembled it and made it work then I feel a deep respect, admiration and gratitude that you´ve shown us such a nice piece of hardware ;-)
Can you just change the LTO drive in a library for increased capacity?? Or does some other controllers need to be replaced as well.
I habe an older library system that uses LTO-1 tapes and I want to use LTO-3 tapes. Its a Dell unit with dual drives
You can just swap the drives
@@dlarge6502 auw, that hurts if this holds true with dlt libraries aswell. I once threw out a Compaq 12 tape dlt library because of the capacity.
Ooh i want one!
I am a bit late to the show do not expecting an answer. But would anyone know at which frequency and standard these RFID tags in the tapes work?
Around 13MHz
I would buy one just to watch it do its boot dance
Library device interface interface.
Sounds like RAS Syndrome*
Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome
mhm damn lto-5 drives are expensive in comparison to the tapes :P
yes, i did look at upgrading it and went all weak at the knees when i saw the price of LTO5 or 6 drives!
I was lucky to find a used LTO-4 drive fairly cheap. Now I have an idea of what goes on in my drive. Too bad we couldn't hear those flat motors slinging the tape real fast past the head.
@@gleepythehen yes, it seems that they really contain many very high-quality parts. But also IBM has a monopoly on manufacturing them from what I heard, I wonder how much this increases their price.
put it back together!
Wtf is this thing taking so long? My MSL6000 is instant on when fully loaded, it takes like 15 seconds to do the whole inventory.
Yours does it's inventory using barcodes stored in memory, the drives take just as long to power on as they need to go through the same self test...
No, mine does scan every label and check every slot. It takes the longest when only one tape is loaded or you have no barcodes (about 90sec)
***** Then you have a very special one, the ones I work with take just as long to boot up as any other LTO tape system...
The drive is cheap. But if u broke the reader its different story
终于知道内部原理了～～
gostaria de ter um desses
Wow u touch the tape
меня удивило мадаин канада )