Tandberg Data Corporation today announced the general availability of its RDX QuickStor backup solution, a new based backup system for small businesses and power users which uses removable hard disk-based cartridges to give offer the archival flexibility of traditional tape-based backup schemes with the benefits (and, often, cost-effectiveness) of random-access disk-based backup systems.
“RDX QuikStor combines all the advantages of tape with the benefits offered by hard disk, and offers customers a quantum leap to faster backup and accessibility,” explained Ken Cruden, Tandberg Data’s executive VP, in a release. “It enables our channel partners to support their small business accounts with a backup solution that offers enhanced performance, instant random access, high reliability and, most importantly, a lower cost than competing low-end tape solutions.”
The RDX QuickStor aims at the lower end of the backup system market: it doesn’t claim to be an enterprise-wide backup solution, but targets small businesses and power users who can crank through a lot of data but for whom corporate backup systems are impractical and tape-based backup is…well, just a pain in the tuchus. And the disk-based cartridges have both a longer storage lifespan and usage lifecycle than traditional tape cartridges.
The RDX QuickStor is available as either a 3.5-inch or 5.25-inch device for SATA connections via internal bays, or as an external device which can connect to a host via USB 2.0,. The cartridges contain high-capacity mobile 2.5-inch hard disk drives in shock-proof, reinforced cases. Transfer rates to the cartridges hit as much as 30 MB/sec (on internal drives, anyway: 25 MB/sec to external devices), meaning the RDX QuickStor can back up 80 GB of video in less than an hour. (Doing that to tape is, um, less than fun, trust me.) Cartrdges are initially available in 40, 80, and 120 GB capacities, and Tandberg says te cartridges will be fully forward and backward compatible, meaning that future cartridges will work with existing systems, and faster data rates will work on legacy cartridges.
Sound expensive? Well, it’s not as cheap as bare drives, but overall pricing is not too horrible: the RDX QuickStor drives start at $354, while cartridge prices start at $139. Obviously, the price-per-gigabyte on the cartridges is likely to drop as hard disk capacities increase and prices drop. The RDX QuickStor supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista, as well as various Linux distributions. (Sorry: Mac users are left in the cold.)
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