History 2000: New StorageTek Tape Technology Derives from 9840

When early last year StorageTek announced its 9840 half-inch longitudinal tape cartridge drive, the company set its sights rather high with its roadmap: upgrade from native capacity of 20GB/10MB/s to 120/40, followed by 800/60.

As it turns out, the manufacturer has just announced its T9940, more modest at 60/10, and another technology entirely, even if some of it is based on the 9840.

The relationship between the 9840 and the T9940 is in fact analogous to that of the LTO consortium’s Accelis and Ultrium, which is to say, on the one hand, a low-capacity cartridge with high access rates, on the other hand, a high capacity tape with slow access times, both using the same recording technology but with no compatibility between the two.

The T9940 drive should be available beginning this month for a price starting at $33,500.

Available interfaces: Escon, Ultra-SCSI and native FC.

Imation will continue to manufacture the media, in this case called Black Watch T9940, in the same form factor as 3480 cartridges, for a cost of $99.

StorageTek currently boasts sales of 9840 models to the tune of 32,000 units in the 22 months since their availability.

StorageTek is also continuing with its WORM cartridges, which can be read and written (once only) by the 9840 tape drives.

The 20GB cartridge, named VolSafe, runs $250.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 154 on November 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.