Hi, As you can imagine from the title, I'm here after a friend of mine decided to buy an HPE 684882-001 LTO-6 Ultrium 6650 machine for his homelab.

He wanted to backup some files (he's onto 60-70 TBs of data) and decided to buy an old LTO-6 machine, he doesn't have Reddit, so asked me for some help. (I'm not very knowledgeable on LTO too..so... here I am, humbly requesting y'all help.) He would like to use it paired with Windows with the Mini SAS cable. He has a model like this one: HP LTO-6 Ultrium 6650 SAS External Tape Drive EH964A 684884-001 | eBay

What kind of HBA card should he consider buying to pair with the Ultrium? Which kind of software supports backing up folders of files? From what I've seen, most of the software available has a subscription model, is there an alternative?

Thanks in advance y'all, A very confused homelabber.