What are you looking for ?
Infinidat
Articles_top

History 2001: Sony Unveils Concept of 1TB Tape Drive

60MB/s, coming in 2002

In Sony’s private suite at CeBIT, the best was yet to come. The company has plans for a 5.25-inch form factor drive with a cartridge at native capacity of 1TB and transfer rates, also native, of 60MB/s!

That’s right, and with a product planned as soon as the end of 2002. We have a tendency to believe Sony’s engineers, since the prototype we saw already showed signs of particularly advanced technology: the (highly simple) routing of the tape functioned well and the helical head was spinning.

More specifically, Sony is simply applying AIT helical technology to half-inch or 12.7mm tape, rather than the traditional 8mm, and with a greater length (the single axis cartridge is an axis very similar to LTO or DLT, if not identical). The manufacturer has even committed a roadmap to paper, with specs doubling to attain capacity of 8TB in a single cartridge!

For years now, magnetic tape technology has had difficulty keeping pace with the highly swift evolution of HDDs. Currently, the highest capacity disk drive is 180GB, while the maximum for tape is 110GB, and in a form factor with 2x the volume. Seagate is talking about 500GB in a 3.5-inch form factor in 2002 (September, 5), by which point LTO and SDLT will have only reached 200GB … but now we have Sony and its great new hope, at 1,000GB.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 159 on April 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Articles_bottom
AIC
ATTO
OPEN-E