HP and Sony Collaborate to Improve Capacity and Performance of Digital Audio Tape Drives
(Business News, 04 Aug 2008 )
HP and Sony Corporation have announced an agreement to create the next-generation Digital Audio Tape format – the DAT 320 – providing improved performance and capacity over existing DAT drives. HP and Sony are jointly developing the DAT or Digital Data Storage (DDS) standard, but will separately offer their own DAT 320 tape drives and cartridges. Similar to previous generations of DAT/DDS, the DAT 320 will be an open standard, which ensures partners can continue to obtain license rights.
Small and midsize businesses as well as enterprises with remote offices use tape to archive and back up data as a key component of their disaster recovery strategies. IDC forecasts the tape market will generate more than $1.4 billion in 2009.(1) The industry is experiencing healthy performance since tape provides SMBs with a cost-effective storage solution to handle the massive increase in digital data.
Twice the capacity and performance
Businesses rely on the volume-leading DAT format to back up and restore critical business data. This provides protection against the loss of data in the case of events such as system failures, operator error, theft and natural disasters.
With backup speeds of up to 86 gigabytes (GB) per hour with 2:1 data compression, the DAT 320 will offer up to 320 GB of capacity on a single cartridge – compared with 160 GB, available from the current DAT 160 format. The DAT 320 also will consume fewer watts per GB than previous generations and will be backwards compatible with the DAT 160. Pricing and availability
HP and Sony will offer the same base hardware for the DAT 320, but will develop unique features within the firmware configuration to sell the DAT 320 tape drives and media through their own branded and OEM business channels.
