LTO Tape with Macbook Pro

[Harry Lipnick]

Hey everyone-
I recently decided to grab an HP 1760 LTO with SAS, as it was a great deal that I didn't want to pass up. I did this primarily with the intention to use it with a MacPro I'm going to get in the next six months-ish, but I'm wondering if there's any way at all (even if it's slow) to use it with my MacBook pro for the time being? Also, I have an old 2005 PowerMac G5 that doesn't see much use...could that work? Would a computer that old even have the right PCI slots for something like the ATTO H380.
Anyway, I know there are some LTO gurus on here that know far more than I do, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Peace,

-Harry

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Which Power Mac model do you have? Some have PCI-E, some of the older ones do not. Either way, you should be able to pick up a SAS controller for the older Mac and use it as a host for the tape drive. Set up a partition or two that you can access over your network to drop files into and then when ready, you can dump that data to tape or do so on a scheduled basis. It's pretty easy. The trick is finding the right controller card to work with the older system.

I don't know of any way to attach the SAS unit directly to a Macbook Pro or other notebook. There are no ExpressCard SAS adapters out there that I'm aware of.

[Tom.Wong]

look into the magma express box... might work to get urself a scsi card connected to ur mbp

[Harry Lipnick]

Which Power Mac model do you have? Some have PCI-E, some of the older ones do not. Either way, you should be able to pick up a SAS controller for the older Mac and use it as a host for the tape drive. Set up a partition or two that you can access over your network to drop files into and then when ready, you can dump that data to tape or do so on a scheduled basis. It's pretty easy. The trick is finding the right controller card to work with the older system.

I don't know of any way to attach the SAS unit directly to a Macbook Pro or other notebook. There are no ExpressCard SAS adapters out there that I'm aware of.

Hey Jeff, I was hoping you'd chime in. I believe the PowerMac was a 1.8 Dual G5, and looking back at a website a minute ago, I'm pretty sure it had only standard PCI. My first instinct was also to look for an ExpressCard/34 to SAS card, but like you, I didn't find anything. Is there perhaps some way to go from a SAS to eSATA cable or 2 (kind of like a backwards fanout cable) and then go into a standard eSATA ExpressCard?


look into the magma express box... might work to get urself a scsi card connected to ur mbp

Tom, I did see this myself. It's not my first choice as it's almost as much as I paid for the HP deck, and would probably only be a temporary solution. Have you had any experience with it yourself? Thanks!
Peace,

-Harry

[Tom.Wong]

no, Sanjin posted it up and connected a red rocket card to an expresscard to his MBP, was getting 4k playback like butter. so the sucker works.