History 2004: D2D Backup Solution for Less Than Autoloader from Overland

Overland Storage revealed its new disk-to-disk backup device, the REO 1000, qualified as “the industry’s first disk-based alternative to entry-level (1U and 2U form-factor) tape autoloaders.”

The newest addition to the REO family is a 1U iSCSI subsystem with up to 1TB raw native capacity emulating LTO-2 tape drive format on a RAID-0 or -5, comprising four 250GB SATA HDDs. It is priced at $4,949.

In comparison, the Overland LoaderXpress autoloader costs nearly 2x that with 11 LTO-2 cartridges, for 2.2TB native capacity.

Too bad Overland does not yet provide for a tape drive connection on its REO 1000, for a complete diskt-disk-to-tape configuration that would allow not only backup but also archival or removal of the data once the autoloader was completely full.

Even so, the REO 1000 confirms that the magnetic tape market has some rough days ahead of it, especially in the immediate future with small office backup solutions.

In light of this, it makes much more sense for Overland to position itself intelligently on the D2D market at this time, rather than to suffer and scramble later, particularly since it is converting its own customers, who sooner or later will make the switch from one technology to the other anyway.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 199 on August 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.