StorageTek drives its way to 200GB
StorageTek drives its way to 200GB
Storagetek has released a new disk array capable of using drives with 146GB capacity, but industry focus has already turned to tape drives with 200GB capacity coming from the company next week.
This week saw the release of the D280, a storage device intended for us in storage area networks (SANs), which doubles the performance of previous products in the D-series line, according to the company.
The D280 runs on Fibre Channel at a throughput speed of up to 772Mbps with 2GB of cache. The individual 146GB drives will be available in November, taking the capacity of the entire system running its maximum of 224 drives to 32 terabytes.
Phillip Belcher, managing director of StorageTek Australia/NZ, said the D280 addressed the need for disk-to-disk backup systems for users who did not want to pay a premium for the disk hardware, but needed the speed of access to data that only disk-based media could provide - such as those in surveillance, healthcare and media industries.
"Secondary storage is going to absolutely explode in the next couple of years," he said. "When we have been talking to clients, we have been discussing disk-to-disk backup requirements, as they are using disk as a primary mechanism for restoration. It is this sort of true disaster recovery mirroring, a cost-effective secondary disk implementation, where ATA will do the job exceptionally well."
Mr Belcher told IDM that next week the company would debut the 9940B tape drive, which would allow 200GB native storage per cartridge at a transfer rate of 30Mbps. Previous products in the same line had been limited to 60GB per cartridge, but the new drive would use the same media as its predecessors with the added capacity, he said.
The D280, which the company said was "delivered through StorageTek's strategic alliance with LSI Logic Storage Systems", will be sold from Monday at a price of A$209,153 for the drive, one terabyte of capacity, and the SANtricity 8.3 application.
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