Tape Drive with maximum capacity and highest speed

We tested the drive on an IBM eServer x225 with dual 2.4 GHz Xeon, 512 MB

RAM, IBM Ultra 320 SCSI 10K RPM drive and Win 2000 SP4. We used CA’s

Brightstor Arcserve backup software and tested the drive for backup transfer

rate for a data set taken from our production file server.

We measured the rate of restoring this data to the hard disk, and did a

stream test in which we backed up a single 1 GB file to the tape. In

backing up real world data the SDLT 600 achieved a transfer rate of 33.56 MB per

sec, which is close to its rated speed. While in restoring that data the

transfer rate was 26.85 MB per sec.  In stream transfer rate test, the

Quantum SDLT achieved 35.4MB per sec, which is almost equal to its rated speed

of 36 MB per sec.

For management of the drive, Quantum provides DLTSage software, downloadable

from the website. There are two versions of the software, one which connects to

the drive via its SCSI interface and the other connects via an IR connection.

The IR version is also available for Win CE Pocket PC.

However the Windows version will only work with IR ports connected to the COM

port of your PC. So you can’t use USB or in-built IR ports. Nonetheless, the

SCSI based software is pretty informative as it gives detailed reports about the

drive and also has a health check test for the drive.

The drive offers maximum capacity and highest speed till now for single tape

drives. It is also priced competitively at Rs 336,000. The drive can also be

considered as a replacement for low capacity DDS and DLT tape autoloaders, which

have slots for holding multiple tapes and a robotic arm to load tapes in the

drive.