Prostor frankenstein's tape and disk
Prostor frankenstein's tape and disk
Nov 7, 2005: Prostor Systems have unveiled their new disk cartridge technology which aims to replace tape for backup, disaster recovery and archiving. This new system promises the portability and long term archiving of tape with the reliability and performance of hard disk, and at a price lower than competing tape solutions.
Prostor's new RDX cartridge technology combines the attributes of disk and tape with an extra layer of data protection to achieve enterprise-class reliability in a product that is suitable for small enterprises right up to data centres.
The cartridge houses a high-capacity mobile 2.5-inch hard disk drive in a shock-proof mounting system and employs an advanced data format based on Adaptive Archival technology, a patent-pending formulation that Prostor claim overcomes the long-term data reliability limitations of native hard disk drives.
Adaptive Archival technology overlays the error correction of a hard disk and is designed to counteract all sources of data degradation, regardless of the cause, to provide a factor of 1,000 improvement in data reliability.
"Customers need high-capacity, removable storage devices for backup and archive to safeguard their critical data." said Robert Amatruda, research manager at IDC. "ProStor System's RDX disk cartridge technology provides a fast, affordable, random access data protection solution for servers and workstations."
"Our market research reveals that customers have always preferred the reliability and speed of disk for backup and disaster recovery, but have been forced to use tape because of its portability, low cost and archivability" said ProStor Systems ceo and president Steve Georgis. "We spent the last year designing a data storage product that delivers the best features of tape and disk, while adding a second layer of data protection designed to work dynamically with the disk drive's own error correction, to give users the confidence that they can safely archive their RDX cartridges for more than a decade."
The RDX cartridge looks and acts like tape and works seamlessly with most existing backup applications. It boasts 30 MB/sec data rate, cutting traditional backup windows from hours to minutes. For example, it takes the RDX system less than an hour to back up 80 GB of native data and milliseconds to retrieve files.
Cartridges range from 60 GB to 400 GB, following the hard disk drive capacity roadmaps and RDX is both forward and backward compatible without limitation. The technology is available now for partner and customer evaluations and will be openly available in 2006.
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