Dell PowerVault 114x - Manual (Page 3)

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Figure 3 – LTFS SDE Directory Structure
Files written to tape on one platform, host OS or LTFS implementation, are readable and
cartridges are fully usable on other platforms.
The innovations of LTFS allow the tape drive to be used with the ease of functionality that
disk and flash drives are used. The important point is that the tape drive is still a linear
(sequential) device, placing data in a linear fashion along the length of wraps of the tape. The
LTFS driver has been developed to allow the response to the user interface to be similar to
that of non- linear storage devices like disk and USB drives.
Operating systems can perform more than 1 task at a time, including multiple tasks or actions
to a single device in many cases. The capability of an operating system to execute multiple
actions at the same time is called multi- threading. An example of a multi- thread action is to
drag- and- drop a large file to a storage device and then drag- and- drop
a second file to the
same storage device. Both copies are executed at the same time to the storage device
rather than 1 completing then the second being started (single thread). Multi
- thread
actions can be accomplished through programming in an application, executing
multiple scripts at the same time, or performing multiple, separate drag- and- drop s at
the same time. When dragging and dropping multiple files selected at the same time, for
instance an entire directory is copied with a single drag
- and- drop motion, the files are
saved in a single threaded manner, each file transfer must complete before the next
begins.