Exabyte Autoloader Makes Small Gains

Exabyte's rack-mounted, 1U VXA-2 PacketLoader tape autoloader has a low price, a high capacity and capabilities that will appeal to small businesses and remote offices.

Exabytes rack-mounted, 1U (1.75-inch) VXA-2 PacketLoader tape autoloader has a low price, a high capacity and capabilities that will appeal to small businesses and remote offices.

The VXA-2 PacketLoader is available now, priced at a relatively inexpensive $3,299, with Dantzs Retrospect Backup single-server Windows edition and Mac OS workgroup edition bundled in.

The VXA-2 PacketLoader, which runs at 6MB per second natively and has a compressed-data speed of 12MB per second, can store as much as 1.6TB of data. Although it isnt the speediest drive around, the tapes small size allows Exabyte to pack 10 slots into a 1U form.

The capacity of the VXA-2 tapes (80GB per tape native and 160GB per tape compressed) is also not exceptionally large, but it will suffice for backing up small workgroup servers and desktops.

A bar-code reader is built into the Exabyte VXA-2 PacketLoader, which is something I normally dont see in lower-end autoloaders. The bar-code reader enables backup applications to keep close track of tapes and their content.

I tested the FireWire 800 version of the Exabyte autoloader; a SCSI version is also available.

More information is at www.exabyte.com.

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