Hewlett-Packard Co has given a big boost to the Data Digital Storage standards group with the launch of the HP 3450A tape drive for the OEM market. The 5.25 form factor drive comes with a SCSI controller, Digital Audio Tape cartridges which store up to 1.3Gb of data in the DDS format, and will be available in August. Apricot Computers Plc claims to be the first company to integrate the drives into its systems, due out in September. Sony Corp was the first major company to endorse the DDS standard with the launch of its SDT-1000 system last month. Its main use will be to serve as an archiving back-up for workstations, low end minicomputer and high end personal computers. Search time however is around 20 seconds, about 1,000 times slower than a Winchester drive. DAT uses tape cartridges the size of ordinary audio cassettes, with 4mm tape, but records like a video cassette recorder. Two DAT standards are vying for supremacy at the moment. DDS uses a sequential recording technique that means changes have to be appended. However it has a faster transfer rate than its Data/DAT competitor – 183Kb per second against 177Kbps – and stores slightly more – 1.3Gb as opposed to 1.2Gb. Data/DAT is more like a disk drive, it has a direct search technique, however DDS is expected to become more like Data/DAT over time. So far 12 companies are lined up on the Data/DAT team, including Apple Computer and Hitachi, but only Gigatrend has a product available as yet. According to a study of the market by Freeman Associates, some 14,500 drives using Digital Audio Tape have been shipped so far, a figure expected to reach 300,000 by 1992 and double again by 1994.
