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What Hiberden Is

Updated August 14, 2026

Hiberden is verification-first 3-2-1 archive software for Windows, Linux, and macOS, anchored on LTO tape. It is built to answer three questions about your archived data, any time you ask: where is it, is it still intact, and has anything changed since you archived it.

The problem it solves

A typical archive workflow verifies a copy once, at the moment it is written, and never looks at it again. The tape goes on a shelf and you trust it. Hiberden treats that as the wrong default. An archive is only as good as your ability to prove, today, that the bytes are still the bytes you wrote. Hiberden keeps a live catalog of every archive and every copy, and lets you re-verify any copy on demand by re-reading and re-hashing it.

What makes it different

  • Verification-first. A copy is marked Verified only after Hiberden re-reads it from the destination and re-hashes it against the recorded SHA-256. It is never assumed from a successful write. See What "Verified" means.
  • AI-ready. An AI connector (MCP) ships built into the app, so your assistant can read the catalog and run real verifications, read-only by default. See Connect an AI assistant and the connector overview.
  • Standards-based. Every archive is one standard TAR with SHA-256 integrity, and it has the same layout everywhere it is stored: disk, NAS, cloud object, or tape file. Tape copies live on standard LTFS. The format is open: your archives are readable without Hiberden. See the on-media format.
  • Customer-owned. Your data lives on your own tape, disk, NAS, and cloud account. Hiberden orchestrates the copies; it never hosts your data, and there is no SaaS in the path.

What it is not

Hiberden is an archive tool, not a continuous-backup tool, and not a hosted service. It runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and writes to infrastructure you own.

Where to go next