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Does anyone know how to make an IBM LTO5 tape drive show up on a desktop like a USB drive? I was under the impression that this was possible. I am running a MacPro, an IBM TS2350 tape drive and an ATTO ExpressSAS H60F0. I have installed the ICU and LTFS software. The Terminal window says that mounting is successful and I am able to partition the tape bit I keep getting a "No Mount Point" line. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

You can't use LTFS to show up like a USB drive. While LTFS enables a user to use the tape "like a disk drive", it must be understood that you will not be able to use the tape drive "just like" a disk. You're talking about Apples and Oranges here.

Yes, they are both storage mediums, but that's where the similarities stop. A HDD (as well as Flash memory) is a random access device that multiple process can read/write data from simultaneously. However, a tape drive is a sequential access device and only one process can read/write data to/from the tape at a time. Once a read or write process is performed on the device, subsequent requests are queued behind the prior command until it is done.

Furthermore, you must use the LTFS tools to mount/unmount an LTFS volume on a Linux, Mac or Windows system to allow the drive to show up as a HDD. For assistance on this part, you need to refer to the LTFS documentation. It requires command line use on Mac and Linux. The commands can be quite long to perform a simple operation.

You must use the 'mkltfs' command to first convert a standard LTO-5 tape to the LTFS format. Becareful that you don't get 'mkltfs' happy with this process as you cannot currently revert a tape back to normal data status in the 1.2.0 LTFS tools.

Once you've formatted the tape for LTFS, you must mount the tape using the 'ltfs' command. You should take a look at IBM's documents on their LTFS utilities.

Hummdis,
Thank you for your response. I just wanted the tape to show up on my desktop like a thumb or hard drive so I could drag and drop files to it. I was neglecting to enter one command at the command line in Terminal. Yes, it is a tape and it does not have instant access like a hard drive but I never expected it to. Anyway, all is well now and it's working like a charm. Again, thank you so much for your response.
Rocky