LTO support

[Pouya Tafti <pouya+lists.netbsd%nohup.io@localhost>]

I'm looking for a low cost offsite backup solution for my teeny local NAS (couple of TiB of redundant ZFS RAIDZ2 on /amd64 9.2_STABLE) for disaster recovery.  Seemingly affordable LTO-5 drives (~EUR 250; sans libraries) pop up on eBay from time to time, and I thought I might start mailing tape backups to friends and family.  Being rather clueless about tape, I was wondering:

- is using an LTO drive for manual backups (or backups at this tiny scale) a fundamentally dumb idea?

- how well-supported and widely-used are they on NetBSD (wrt both kernel devices and userland tools)?

- are there reliable strategies to split a larger ZFS volume across several smaller cartridges (LTFS seems not to support splits)?

- are there specific caveats to watch out for (e.g. if used drives are to be avoided, or would end up being cost blackholes necessitating further equipment, obsolete media, etc.)?

Many thanks,
Pouya