Product Reviews

It may have come as a shock to many customers when Sony, HP and Seagate announced the demise of the DDS tape format in mid-2001. However, it must be even more annoying to find that, after nearly two years, the latter two vendors have decided to resurrect it. Realistically, this comes as no surprise, as the DDS market share is huge and accounts for around 50 per cent, with IDC estimating an installed base of some 9 million units.

HP says the DAT72 isn't a knee-jerk reaction but a response to genuine customer demand. However, don't expect any major improvements - the DAT72 is the first tape drive we've seen that introduces a new generation but doesn't

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offer a performance boost. The head geometry has been modified slightly to improve track density, while media length has been increased to 170m. Storage capacity goes up to a native 36GB, but performance remains the same as DDS-4 at 3MB/sec. Also, all is not well in the DDS camp, as this next generation can't be called DDS-5 because Sony, which co-owns the logo, won't let HP use it.

To test the DAT72, we installed it on the same server as used to benchmark the Tandberg Data DLT VS160 drive (see above). Veritas Backup Exec produced the best results, securing the test data at an average of 209MB/min and restoring it to its original location at 229MB/min. We found ARCserve noticeably slower, lagging behind on all tasks by around 12 per cent.

It has to be said that the small to medium end of the backup market is in turmoil. The VXA and ValuSmart formats took more than three years to produce a second generation, Tandberg Data's SLR range looks to have stalled in the water, and Sony hasn't promoted its AIT products hard enough. Naturally, customers must be confused as to the best route to take. At the time of writing, HP had yet to announce a product roadmap and, without this, the DAT72 looks like nothing more than a stay of execution.