History 2005: O-Mass to Push Cartridge Capacity to 2TB

Tandberg subsidiary O-Mass had set itself the goal of building a 1TB tape drive, but has instead decided to concentrate on a unit with 2x that capacity using a new magneto-resistive read head currently in the design process.

A 2TB demo is expected to be completed in 2005, before the firm seeks a partnership to distribute the technology.

In 2000, O-Mass started working on a 500GB/60MB/s drive, then switched to 600/64 the following year.

In 2002, a new twist developed with the arrival of Imation financing: the project became a single-axis cartridge (not dual), this time in the DLT/LTO format for 1.2TB, now 2TB.

Because of the various delays, O-Mass has essentially been obliged to push the capacity of its magnetic cartridge in the face of pressure from the competition, which has not waited to forge ahead.

After more than 5 years since the debut of this project, we had begun to despair that this innovative technology would never see the light of day, particularly since the tape drive market no longer has the allure it used to have. Is there even a place for a new tape technology, even one at 2TB? Who else but O-Mass would answer in the affirmative?   

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 208 on May 2005 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.