History (1999): Seagate Abandons AIT

According to Kevin Perry, executive director of Seagate Storage Products, his company has decided to cease distribution of Sony’s 8mm AIT drives, since sales have not met Seagate’s expectations, nor those of Sony.

The product has proven reliable, Perry explained, but there was an acceptance problem with the helical scan technology.

Note that, at the time the agreement between the two companies was reached, in mid-97, Seagate planned ultimately to manufacture the drive, but never did, contenting itself just to sell the Japanese manufacturer’s drives.

Seagate’s line of tape drives is thus now comprised of Travan and 4mm units, to which LTO drives will soon be added.

In order to fill the gap between low-end 4mm devices and the high-end LTO units, Seagate could choose low-cost lower performance LTO tape drives, following the example of Benchmark, which positions its DLT units just below Quantum’s drives.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 141 on October 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.