- What interfaces are used?
- What are the transfer rates?
- What are the capacities of these systems?
- How do I pick a drive?
- Who uses these tape drives?
- What do Super DLTtape products do?
- Where are these products used?
- How reliable are these systems?
- What is linear recording?
- Why use Super DLTtape systems instead of disk?
- What happens to my tapes when newer drives come out?
What interfaces are used?
The Super DLTtape™ 220 drives accommodate Low Voltage Differential Ultra 2 SCSI and High Voltage Differential Ultra 2 SCSI. The DLTtape 8000 drive uses SCSI-2 Fast/Wide, SE/LVD or HVD. The DLT1 drive uses Wide Ultra SCSI LVD.
Super DLTtape™ drives achieve a sustained transfer rate of 11 MB/s native and 22 MB/s compressed, with a burst transfer rate of 80 MB/s max via SCSI bus. The DLTtape 8000 drive transfers at 6 MB/s native and 12 MB/s compressed, with burst rates of 20 MB/s synchronous and 12 MB/s asynchronous. DLT1 drives transfer at 3 MB/s native and 6 MB/s compressed, and a burst rate of 20 MB/s synchronous. The Super DLTtape Technology Roadmap shows future generations of drives at 100+ MB/s, a ten fold increase.
Super DLTtape drives fill a single cartridge with 110 GB of data in native mode, and 220 GB compressed. DLTtape™ drives fill a DLTtape IV cartridge with 40 GB native and 80 GB compressed. The Super DLTtape Technology Roadmap shows future generations of systems at 1.2 TB per cartridge, a ten fold increase.
Look at the range of features and technologies, and compare the performance, functionality and price points. Super DLTtape Technologies ensure backward read compatibility with the millions of DLTtape IV cartridges in use and archived away. A modest start with a utilitarian DLTtape drive will allow you to carry that investment forward into newer generations of drives, as your business grows and your backup needs change.
Super DLTtape and DLTtape drives are used for backup and archiving a wide range of applications, including mid range computers, network servers, high end workstations, library automations systems, and mainframe environments running UNIX, NetWare, Microsoft Windows NT, LINUX and proprietary operating systems. There is an installed base of 1.6 million drives and over 68 million tape cartridges.
Super DLTtape drives and media back up business critical data from primary storage devices, such as servers, storage disk drive systems, and storage appliances, in an efficient and economical manner. Multiple copies of these backups can be stored in different places for added security. They serve as permanent archives of all your data, and are instrumental in restoring your system in the event of disaster.
Super DLTtape systems are ideal for all types of enterprise environments that exchange and store digital content. These systems deliver the necessary reliability to support mission critical applications that require heavy backup demands, due to 24 hour use, large file size, or constantly changing conditions. It is the most popular backup choice for:
- e-commerce
- internet and intranet
- archiving
- disaster recovery
- data mining
- medical imaging
- graphic arts
- CAE / CAD / CAM
- multimedia
- publishing
- data acquisition
- video on demand
- digital nonlinear video editing
- video distribution
- storage service providers
- application service providers
No form of data storage and backup is more reliable. Tape backup is the only medium not affected by infectious code viruses. The Super DLTtape 220 drives and the DLTtape 8000 drive reach 250,000 hours MTBF at 100% duty cycle, with the DLT1 drive at > 200,000 hours. All media withstand a minimum of 1,000,000 head passes and have a shelf life of 30 years.
DLTtape™ drives read and write in a linear pattern, as each data track runs the entire length of the tape. When the end of the tape is reached, the head is repositioned to a new track and the tape is then recorded again, this time in the opposite direction. Super DLTtape Technology allows 448 tracks on ˝" wide tape.
Helical scan systems, by contrast, record data in diagonal stripes across the tape. Tracks can be overlapped for a high density of data. However, this introduces increased difficulty in error detection and correction. By squeezing so much data into a small amount of linear space on the tape, even a minute defect on the can corrupt the data.
Ultimately, Super DLTtape is the only tape technology that will allow for continuous scalability across subsequent generations, eventually reaching 1.2 TB native capacity in its fourth generation SDLT 2400 product.
Removable tape media allows for scalable storage solutions, always offering more flexibility than any change or growth in business would warrant. Multiple copies are easily generated for redundancy and offsite archive. Overall, Super DLTtape Technology is more cost effective than disk technology when it comes to cost per gigabyte, and it is the most reliable way to prevent data corruption from digital code viruses. Also, the Super DLTtape Roadmap will continuously outperform disk technology, in terms of capacity and performance, year after year.
Now in its third decade, each succeeding generation of drive is backward read compatible with the tape cartridges of previous drives. The Super DLTtape 220 drive today reads the millions of DLTtape IV tapes used with DLT 8000 and DLT1 drives, as well as the older DLT 7000 and DLT 4000 drives. This baton passing of tapes from one generation to the next is documented in the Super DLTtape Technology Roadmap, even as the drives and tapes achieve a ten fold performance increase through the next several years.
