HP DAT 72

Monday, November 10, 2003

This external drive uses the next level of DDS tapes, DAT 72 and also supports DDS-4 and DDS-3. Its total native capacity is 36 GB and a transfer rate of 10.5 GB/hour. This backs up the entire tape in about 3 hours. The drive has lower capacity and speed than the Sony AIT-2 drive but still fits in the entry-level server segment. In our tests, it faired well giving transfer rates for normal backup and restore as claimed. In stream backup, it even overshot its rated speed. However it didn’t give any compression at all. 

A neat feature in the drive is One-Button-Disaster Recovery, using which you can boot a system directly from the drive and restore it back from tapes . It comes with TapeWare software to do that. A “clean-cartridge” LED indicates whether the heads require cleaning. It’s the most expensive drive in its category, but the low per GB cost for tape, good performance and features make it a highly recommended drive. 

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