Tape Still Drives Backup Space
The USB 2.0 version of the DAT 72 tape drive is list-priced at $749, compared with $599 for the DAT 40. They were expected to ship July 11.
ewlett-Packard is moving to convince the channel that tape is still the best backup solution for the small-business space.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor recently released new versions of its DAT 72 and DAT 40 tape drives, which use a USB 2.0 interface instead of the traditional SCSI interface to make them less expensive and easier to install, said Troy Davis, product marketing manager at HP StorageWorks.
The DAT format is still the most popular of all tape formats, and while sales are falling slowly over time, DAT is expected to remain the best-selling tape format through 2008, according to research firm Freeman Reports.
HP’s new DAT tape drives are available in external and internal versions. The external drives connect to a PC via its USB port. The internal models can either connect to the USB port built onto the motherboard of certain HP ML-series servers or be routed through the back of the computer via a cable routing kit that uses an empty adapter card slot, Davis said.
Stephen Allen, president of Integrated Technology Systems, a New York-based solution provider catering mainly to small businesses, said that with DAT’s popularity among his customers, USB will be a welcome addition to his product line.
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“Manufacturers have really created a market for USB drives, but backup has been left behind,” Allen said. “We sell DAT all the time. But customers need a $150 to $250 add-on for a SCSI host-bus adapter and cable. So USB will make for a great drive.”
While the USB format is not as high-performance as SCSI, it makes little difference for DAT drives, which have a throughput of about 6 MBps in either format, said Davis.
DAT 72 drives can put up to 72 Gbytes of compressed data on a single cartridge, while DAT 40 drives have a per-cartridge capacity of 40 Gbytes.