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The arrival of DAT 72 technology has given a midlife boost to the 4mm Digital Data Storage (DDS) format with an affordable tape drive solution that offers a convenient, backward- compatible upgrade path to high-capacity backup for the huge installed base of DDS users. This fifth-generation implementation of the DDS format takes the technology to 72 Gigabytes (GB) per cartridge assuming 2:1 data compression, an 18x improvement over first-generation 2GB products. The manufacturers supporting the DAT 72 introduction are Hewlett Packard and Seagate on the hardware side, and Maxell is the premier media supplier.
The emergence of DAT 72 is good news for a technology segment that is often overlooked with much of the industry attention focused on the high-end battle between SuperDLT and LTO. However, DDS technology is the most popular tape drive technology ever-with an installed base of nearly 7 million drives-and still dominates the low end of the tape drive market with a 58% market share in 2002, according to Freeman Reports.
At the heart of DDS technology is the compact 4mm data cartridge, such as that supplied by Maxell Corporation, who for the last 30 years has been dedicated to being first to market with next generation product. The media improvements over five product generations form the basis of the continued capacity improvements for DDS. The evolution of DDS media is closely linked to the continuous improvements in metal particle coating technology. In fact, metal particle media dominates digital data storage media today thanks to the inroads made with the first generations of 4mm DDS and 8mm helical scan data recorders when most computer tape products were based on standard ferric oxide media.
DDS media introduced metal particle as a viable technology for high-density digital data storage and, today, MP media dominates the digital data storage market. DLT, Super DLT, LTO, IBM Magstar and other popular media formats, in addition to 4mm DDS, rely on MP formulations for reliable, high-density data recording.
The move to MP media from the gamma ferric oxide and chrome tape formulations that were widely used at the time was necessitated by the higher recording densities demanded by the 4mm format to compensate for the small form factor of the cartridge. The compact 4mm DDS cassette was...