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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (4530)	9/26/1998 12:29:00 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

Yes, I have so noted. Though I still haven't bought any HTCH. Inching toward it. But my sense of their upper management still makes me leery. Here is an article on tape drives generally and DLT/SDLT that I just dug up, from Computer Reseller News. Positive on high end tape drives, negative on low end drives. For personal use only. September 21, 1998, Issue: 808 Section: News Tape drive vendors eye high end Joseph F. Kovar Irvine, Calif. -- To help maintain market share, tape drive vendors are introducing high-end versions of their products. Tandberg Data ASA is expected to unveil upscale versions of its Travan and SLR drives today, and Quantum Corp. recently gave more details of its upcoming digital linear tape (DLT) technology. With the new products, vendors hope to combat slower growth of compact tape drives. Shipments of compact tape drives, including QIC, DAT, 8mm and DLT drives, will decline 3 percent per year through 2003, due to increased shipments of low-cost removable disk drives, according to a report from Freeman Associates, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based research firm. The report also forecasts that revenue from compact tape drives will rise about 4 percent yearly by 2003 because of a shift to high-end products, especially DLT. Tandberg Data, Oslo, Norway, is introducing its Travan NS20 Pro for entry-level small-business server applications. NS20 Pro stores up to 20 Gbytes of compressed data, with a compressed data- transfer rate of 7.2 Gbytes per hour. List prices start at $530 for an internal bare-drive version. The company also is introducing the SLR24 for network, workstation and midrange applications. The SLR24 has a compressed data capacity of 24 Gbytes and a compressed transfer rate of 8.6 Gbytes per hour. Prices start at $1,023 for the internal bare drive. Both drives are available through commercial distribution. Tandberg Data also unveiled new initiatives to increase its channel presence, said Al Duras, vice president of distribution sales and marketing. These initiatives include a revamped sales strategy focused on the channel, a 48-hour advanced warranty exchange program, a four-hour returned merchandise authorization (RMA) response and same-day shipment of orders received by 2 p.m. Tandberg Data's new drives are coming to market only a week after Quantum, Milpitas, Calif., revealed an agreement to license Tandberg Data as a second manufacturing source for DLT drives, including DLT 4000, DLT 7000 and the upcoming Super DLT drives. In a related development, Quantum recently elaborated on the technology that will be used in its Super DLT drives, scheduled for release in the second half of next year. Super DLT tape drives use a new material that allows magnetic data encoding on one side and laser coding of servo data for positioning and speed control on the other side, according to George Saliba, vice president of advanced product development and chief technology officer of Quantum's Specialty Storage Product Group. Because no separate magnetic head is used for servo control, the drive's heads can be mounted in clusters in order to increase native capacity to 100 Gbytes or more per cartridge at a rate of 10 Mbytes per second. Quantum remembers how a shortage of media initially held back DLT drive sales, Saliba said. Because DLT was a new technology at the time, "it was at first hard to get media vendors to invest. But in the future, we will definitely have multiple sources of media." The introduction of Super DLT next year could affect DLT 7000 sales, said Bob Abraham, vice president of Freeman Associates. "It could impact DLT 7000 sales as customers wait for the new drives to become available, especially if Quantum is slow to ramp up production," he said. "That's the worst-case scenario." Both the SLR24 and Super DLT drives are backward-read-compatible with two previous generations of their respective family lines, but neither offers backward-write compatibility. Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc.