LTOG

LTOG is a modern LTO tape manager for Windows that lets you use tape like any other drive. Format a cartridge with LTFS 2.4, mount it as a drive letter, and drag, drop, and browse files in File Explorer without proprietary backup software. Tapes follow the open LTFS standard, so they stay readable on any LTFS-compatible system. Tape mounting is powered by WinLtfs.

⚠️ Data Loss Warning

Every measure has been taken to prevent data loss but it can still occur in rare cases.

Why? Tape drives have an internal memory buffer that stores written data before flushing it to the tape. When Moving files from, say an SSD, to the virtual LTO drive, it gets written to this internal memory buffer that we cannot control. Once moved to the memory buffer, Windows marks the original file moved and ready for deletion. If the tape drive, cartridge, cabling, or host adapter has an unexpected or intermittent failure before actually flushing to the cartridge, Windows may delete the file anyway.

Copying instead of moving files or folders prevents this issue as you will retain the original file on your computer. You should only delete the copied over files or folders once you actually unmount the tape drive, not when the file transfer finishes.

Features

• 🖥️ Native WinUI 3 GUI
• 📼 LTO-5+ Support
• 🗂️ LTFS 2.4.0 Support
• 💽 Virtual Drive Mounting
• 💾 Automatic Index Backup
• 🔒 Honors Write-Protection and Read-Only
• 🛡️ WHQL-signed Drivers
• ❤️ Forever FLOSS (GPLv3)

Requirements

• Windows 10/11, or Windows Server 2019 or newer (64-bit only)
• An LTO-5 or newer cartridge with a compatible LTO Tape Drive

See Supported Tape Drives for a list of tape drives that are known to be compatible.

Building

First clone and enter the repository:

git clone https://github.com/rlaphoenix/LTOG
cd LTOG

Then build the LTFS+WinFsp engine, the GUI, and the Installer with .\build. Instructions below show how to individually build each part of the project.

1. WinLtfs (LTFS + WinFsp)

The LTFS executables, tape backends, and winfsp-x64.dll are built by the WinLtfs project and consumed here as a pinned release.

To build the engine from source yourself (MSYS2 + WinFsp toolchain), follow the build instructions in the WinLtfs repo, then copy its dist/ output into LTOG's dist/winltfs/.

2. GUI

Install the .NET 8 SDK:

winget install -e Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.8

In PowerShell:

cd src  # enter the source folder
dotnet build LTOG.csproj -c Release -p:Platform=x64  # build (self-contained)
robocopy "bin\x64\Release\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64" "..\dist" /E  # self-contained output -> ..\dist

3. Installer

With dist/ fully populated (LTFS engine + GUI), build the Windows installer:

pwsh -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File installer\build-installer.ps1

It fetches what it needs and writes setup.exe to installer\Output\.

Licensing

LTOG as a whole is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (see LICENSE).

A full per-component inventory — every redistributed binary, its license, copyright, and corresponding source — is in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md, with the license texts in licenses/. The installer ships these alongside the binaries.

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© rlaphoenix 2026