History 2004: All Three Are there in LTO-3 Drive

With only 2 weeks separation, IBM and then Hewlett-Packard both launched their new UItrium LTO-3 half-inch cartridge tape drives, although it was 2 months after Certance/Quantum released its own device, already available, compared to mid-December for the competition.

The 3 units are very similar, except for 3 details. Certance CL 800 only has a maximum transfer rate of 68MB/s compared to 80MB/s for the 2 others; HP is offering an Ultra320 SCSI interface, whereas its rivals stopped with Ultra160, knowing that IBM was alone in offering, eventually (2005) a native FC attachment, as on its previous LTO models; while HP is alone in supporting, at the moment, WORM cartridges, although the others will no doubt shortly follow suit.

A few other details about HP’s and IBM’s announcements: Big Blue has added new independent tape loader and threader motors and positive pin retention for better reliability, as well as a graceful dynamic braking system to prevent stretching or breaking the tape, or loose tape wraps.

HP offers what it calls the “One-Button-Disaster Recovery” utility to minimize recovery time. Using a single media, it allows for the restoration of an entire system (OS, configuration, applications, drivers and data files).

In order to double transfer rates and capacity, the new drives use a 16-channel head actuator in serpentine mode and 2,500-2,700Oe tape of increased length (from 609 to 680m, with 704 tracks – compared to 512 on LTO-2).

All the tape manufacturers that have signed on for LTO are close to releasing their LTO-3 offering, whether it’s Fujifilm, Imation, Maxell, Sony or TDK. Only Verbatim is still silent on the subject. LTO-4 (native 800/160) is expected in the next 18 to 24 months. 

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 203 on December 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.