History (1999): DLT 8000 at 40GB and 6MB/s

What was known as DLT 7000+ will, in the end, be called DLT 8000.

In comparison with its predecessor, DLT 7000, the major enhancements are not especially impressive, when you consider that native capacity grows from 35 to 40GB, and the transfer rate from 5 to 6MB/s. Hardly anything to write home about, right?

For the moment, its manufacturer, Quantum, has not officially announced the product – this should happen in June – revealing only the new capacity point and its support for the product’s traditional OEMs (Adic, ATL, Breece Hill, HP, IBM, Overland, Qualstar, StorageTek and Siemens).

And yet, the product nonetheless deserves close attention. The design was conceived with an eye “to making a future low-end product, a value line product, less costly to produce, along side the Super DLT, which will represent the high end,” according to an internal source at Quantum. “By mid-2000, this will be our low-end DLT product.“

Another important point: the new 8000 rectifies a major flaw in the 7000, its overly high speed. It may seem like a paradox, but low-end and mid-range servers frequently cannot transmit data to the drive quickly enough, and consequently, the drive is obliged to stop the tape while awaiting data, before starting up again. This leads to a repositioning problem, which drastically reduces transfer rates during backup, and Quantum’s competitors in 8mm technology do not miss an opportunity to point this out.

With the 8000, the tape speed is now variable, and will adjust to the incoming data flow.

As for the rest, the new device will use exactly the same magnetic head, the same DLTtape IV cartridge, will read and write 7000 and 4000 cartridges and will have the same dimensions (apart from the table top version, slightly smaller). The areal density appears to be the same, with the gains in capacity as well as speed due instead to improved data recording code, with less overhead.

The 8000 drive’s price should also be identical to the current cost of the 7000, which will consequently be slightly lowered.

Shipping is expected to begin in 2H99. Quantum is by no means slowing production and sales of its DLT 4000, despite the fact that it dates from 1994 (who can name another storage peripheral, besides the diskette, that has shown such longevity?).

Currently, in Europe, more 4,000 units are sold than 7000, while in the US, the 7000 is beginning to take the lead.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 136 on May 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.