Sony Shows off S-AIT Storage Platform

Efforts to put more data in smaller spaces are becoming increasingly important as we not only rely more on digital content but amass great gobs of it as the years roll by. Luckily, since we all need to store more data, there's a tremendous financial impetus for companies to develop storage technologies. Money means research and research means more new products for us to buy. Last week, Sony unveiled a new tape-based data storage platform called the S-AIT format that it says will enable up to 500GB of native (uncompressed) capacity to be stored on a single-reel, half" tape cartridge by the end of 2002. The S-AIT drive will use Sony's AIT architecture in a 5.25" extended drive form-factor that will feature a sustained native transfer rate of up to 30MB per second. Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries and Matsushita Electric Industrial are also getting into the act by manufacturing S-AIT drives and media, and tape library manufacturers like ADIC, Qualstar, and Spectra Logic are expected to support putting S-AIT drives and media into half" tape automation products. Based on helical-scan recording technology, S-AIT has a roadmap to scale to up to four teraBytes of uncompressed capacity in a single cartridge. The first generation S-AIT drives will provide uncompressed capacities ranging from four teraBytes in a 2U rack-mountable configuration to more than 500TB in a 1,000 cartridge freestanding library. S-AIT drives are expected to be available late next year at a list price of under $10,000.