Articles
RSSTandberg Data and Imation Unveil New SLR40 Tape Drive and Cartridges
October 5, 2000
The SLR40 tape drive is planned for availability mid-June 2000 at manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $995 (actual pricing may vary). The Imation SLR40 tape cartridge will be available mid-June at an MSRP of $49 per cartridge.
The SLR40 tape drives and cartridges provide a complete, automatic data backup, file transfer and archiving solution for IT systems and network environments - meeting the needs and demands of high performance tape storage at an extremely affordable price. The SLR40 carries the proven reliability of SLR technology and extends its scalable, backward-compatible range for the entry-level market and upwards.
"The introduction of the new high performance SLR40 tape drive, with its 3MB/s native and 6MB/s compressed transfer rate, combined with its scalability and backward compatibility with previous generations of SLR tape drives, automation products and tape cartridges, gives customers a unique growth opportunity with the proven, highly reliable SLR technology. SLR products continue to offer customers best in class price/performance value as well as the security of being able to scale to higher capacity and performance SLR drives (SLR60 and 100) meeting the needs of the small and medium business segment upwards," said Bjorn Evensen, Corporate VP of Marketing, Tandberg Data.
"The Imation SLR40 tape cartridge was developed in response to an industry need for high-performance, cost-effective and reliable data storage," said Steve Carter, General Manager of Program Development and Marketing, Imation Data Storage and Information Management. "The new SLR40 tape drives and cartridges expand the coverage of SLR solutions for the fast-growing small and medium business server market."
Performance
The Tandberg SLR40 tape drive offers in-line compression, enabling hardware compression before it enters the buffer, thereby freeing valuable buffer capacity, increasing data throughput and system performance. SLR40 tape drives offer fast average file access times at less than 35 seconds. These features, coupled with the large 8MB buffer, ensure that the time used for back-up/restore is kept to an absolute minimum. Additionally, the combined support of the SCSI Ultra 2 Wide LVD/SE interface allows for maximum performance when connected to either an Ultra 2 wide single-ended or LVD bus. Combined, these major performance enhancements enable SLR40 tape drives to outperform DAT technology, while offering an extremely attractive migration path to automation products.
Optimized for automated environments, Imation SLR40 data cartridges are based upon metal particulate media technology and feature advanced servo-written patterns, which help provide high performance and capacity.
VR2 Enabled
The SLR40 tape drive incorporates the VR2(TM) (Variable Rate Randomizer) technology developed by Overland Data, Inc. (NASDAQ: OVRL - news). VR2 is an area-effective recording technique by which data is written using PRML (Partial Response Maximum Likelihood) format. This advanced PRML significantly increases the native capacity and native data transfer rate performance of linear tape technologies without requiring any changes in tape path design, recording heads and/or media.
Reliability
The Tandberg SLR40 tape drive features a six-channel Thin Film Magneto Resistive Head (TF/MR), that writes four tracks simultaneously, and includes features, such as data striping and Error Correction Code (ECC) blocks over four tracks, improving error correction and restoration of data from damaged media. Additionally, the read/write channel adjusts automatically to changes in media and media performance, and a shock protection system uses the servo coil and servo tracks on the media to ensure that data always is written at the correct position on the tape. The SLR40 tape drive carries a three-year limited warranty including a two-day ``Advanced Replacement Service'' when purchased through authorized Tandberg Data resellers.
Imation SLR tape cartridges are based on proven linear recording technology, which provides significant reliability advantages over traditional helical scan drives and media. With Imation SLR, the tape path is contained entirely within the cartridge, reducing tape stress, ensuring data integrity and increasing cartridge reliability.
Compatibility and Scalability
Building on the proven, scalable and highly reliable SLR platform, the 2.9 million existing users of SLR tape drives can easily and safely migrate to the SLR40. New users are assured that SLR tape drives - including the new SLR60 (30/60GB) released on May 9, 2000 at Networld Interop and the SLR100 (50/100 GB) tape drive released at Comdex Fall 1999 - will more than match their needs for storage capacity and transfer rates well into the future, as single tape drives or integrated into tape automation products.
