Tape Drive Alternatives Unveiled

LAS VEGAS -- Three companies here at Comdex are challenging the viability of tape backup, offering alternatives that tackle the same task.

Iomega's solution is a drive and high-capacity removable disks. Fastora is hyping a one-drive NAS device, while Nexsan's answer is a two-unit storage array. Iomega and Nexsan both claim their storage products are cheaper than tape alternatives and their message seems to be the same: the tape drive's days are numbered.

Iomega Shows Rev

Iomega is showcasing prototypes of its REV drives and accompanying disks, which the company expects to launch in March 2004.

The external drive will cost about $499; the internal configuration will be a little cheaper. The products are the company's first to be based on its Removable Rigid Disk technology.

The cartridges, which will cost about $49, hold 35GB of uncompressed data. Using Iomega Automatic Backup Pro software to compress your files, you could fit 90GB of data on each disk. The disks are rated to handle over one million rewrites, according to Iomega representatives, who say two factors contribute to the longevity: the sealing of the read/write heads and electronics inside the REV drive to protect them from vibration, and an air filtration system.

Iomega is promising faster backup speeds than tape drives from REV, estimating an average of 18MB per second. Bundled with the drives is the company's new reboot technology, which allows a server's BIOS to recognize an external REV drive the same way it does an internal drive, and to boot from it.

The first external REV drive will be USB. In second-half 2004, the company expects to introduce FireWire, internal SCSI, and SATA models.

More Storage

Similarly, Fastora is showing a NAS storage device at its booth.

The NAS-T1, which will be available next year, has one IDE HDD bay. Fastora's earlier products, the NAS T2 and the NAS-T4, have two and four bays, respectively.

A 100GB NAS-T1 will cost about $199; the 300GB version will run $399.

Going Terabyte

Designed for larger storage needs is Nexsan's ATAbaby Twins; a pair of them can store up to 2.4TB of data for $5600, in the pre-installed configuration.

Smaller configurations of the dual RAID-5 configuration are available, down to a 300GB pair, which costs about $1895.

The product is designed to offer a cheaper way to back up data than tape drives, says Diamond Lauffin, Nexsan senior executive vice president. The economy is partly because maintenance on a tape autostacker is higher, he says.

Lauffin also stresses that Nexan's technology is not proprietary; you could buy the ATAbaby Twins without the drives installed, and install your own. The ATAbaby Twins can accommodate any brand of hard drive, Lauffin says.

They also require no software to operate. Via Ethernet, the units can be controlled through a console for long-distance backup or to copy data remotely. To protect against accidental shutdown, the units don't have an on/off switch.

For more Comdex news, check PCWorld.com's ongoing coverage of the trade show.