History (1995): RedWood From StorageTek at 50GB in Helical 3480-Like Cartridge

Storage Technology (Boulder, CO) is the first to bring helical scan recording technology for magnetic tapes for mainframes back into the news with its new RedWood SD-3 cartridge subsytem.

It uses half-inch wide magnetic tape encased in a plastic cartridge of the same form factor as a 3480 cartridge. Thus, STK makes it possible to insert them in its libraries, which can hold up to 6,000 cartridges.

The D-3 technology has been developed for StorageTek by Matsushita Electric Industrial and its subsidiary, Panasonic, for a contract estimated at the time of its April 1993 announcement at around $200 million.
The cartridges, supplied by 3M, are available in 3 native capacities: 10, 25 or 50GB. With compression and compaction, these numbers can be multiplied by 3.

The drive subsystem exploits Escon fiber-optic technology and supports F/W SCSl-2 interface.

US list pricing for one controller transport unit with Escon attachment is $162,000.

Worldwide production and shipment are scheduled to begin in 2095.

Redwood is more for archiving than backup and will be only partially in competition with Magstar.

Both IBM and StorageTek alike, are counting on other markets such as video, the capture of satellite images or seismic data.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 87, published on April 1995.