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Normally when we talk about sync, it means sync data from location A to location B on a disk or disk array.

Is that even possible to do the sync from a disk to tapes? Lets say I have 15T data on disk and I want to use 3 LTO 7 tapes as destination to sync the data from disk. If file xxx was removed from disk, it will also be removed from tape. Is this possible?

What about incremental backup to tape? Yesterday I have 15T on disk and was fully backed up on tape, today I only have 13T data on disk and doing a incremental backup to tape, does that mean 2 T will be removed from tape?

Giacomo1968
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Root Loop
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1 Answers1

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In short answer, no because of the reason below.

LTO drive writes a new data track that overlaps a part of adjacent (or previously written) data track. This writing method is similar to that of modern SMR HDDs. In other words, width of recording head is wider than the actual track width written in media. Thus, if you try to erase or over-write a single file in tape media, that process also erases other files. This is a nature of tape storage system.

One might think that LTFS (Linear Tape File System) can delete a single file, however, this process marks data is unavailable, and data still remains in media due to the reason above - used volume capacity is not recovered.

Kevin Nakamoto
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