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Since 1992, 4mm digital audio tape (DAT) has become the de facto data protection standard for the rapidly growing entry-level and midrange server markets. DAT standards have been developed and agreed upon by an established committee of industry leaders who have established a group of standards for four generations of tape technology. These standards, known as Digital Data Storage (DDS) formats, have provided increasing throughput and capacity while maintaining full backwards read and write compatibility.
In 1994, 3M Corporation (whose storage division was spun off as Imation in 1996) introduced a new set of tape standards called Travan. The new Travan standards brought a clearly defined roadmap and consistent cartridge footprint to the popular quarter inch cartridge (QIC) tape format. Together, QIC formats, dominated by Travan, have quietly become the tape industry's volume shipment leaders, with over twice as many drives shipped as its nearest competitor. Historically, Travan has been a desktop backup solution attaching to the millions of desktop and workstation PCs shipped each year.
Change seems to be the only constant in the rapidly growing data storage industry. Today's computing public is blessed with more powerful processors and larger, more affordable disk drives, usually at a continually decreasing cost. These trends continue to place pressure on tape technologies. Performance, capacity, reliability improvements, and lower costs are required just to keep pace. Growing market share or expanding into new markets are among the challenges facing today's tape manufacturers. Recent advances in Travan technology have enabled it to compete in the traditional DAT market space.
History And Installed Base
DAT technology has long been positioned to sell into the low-end and midrange server markets. For years, it was the only technology that was affordable and provided adequate performance...