[Sunhelp] High Capacity Tape Drives

[George Thiruvathukal]

On Wed, 3 May 2000, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> > One in particular that looked good was the Compaq 50GB AIT 
> > drive - that's
> > 50 gigs on a single tape! More with compression turned on.
> 
> Uhm, no (well, I'm 95% sure, anyway).  :(  Compaq's AIT drives are all
> AIT-1, which is 25GB native, 50GB compressed.  Some of the AIT-1 drives can
> take the longer tapes, for a native capacity of 35GB.  The newer AIT-2
> drives have a higher capacity (I can't remember how big, but bigger).

It must be new, but apparantly it's for real. Check out question 2 on
Compaq's FAQ at
http://www.compaq.com/products/storageworks/tape-and-optical-storage/ait50gb-qanda.html

If you are lucky enough to get 2:1 compression, it'll even do 100GB.

Compaq gives credit to Sony for inventing AIT, but I haven't seen a 50/100
GB drive from Sony or anyone else.

Cheers,

George

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George J. Thiruvathukal                       |         gjt at lemont.rice.iit.edu
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