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Imation, a champion of the RDX cartridge-load storage trade, on Jan. 3 preannounced at the Storage Visions 2011 Conference in Las Vegas a new, eight-bay RDX drive for small and midsize businesses.
An RDX multicartridge machine is a straight network-attached storage device that contains several hard-disk cartridges of interchangeable capacities with many of the properties of tape in a ruggedized shell.
Imation’s latest is the A8, a new autoloader-like device with iSCSi network connectivity, up to 8 terabytes of native capacity storage (using eight 1TB cartridges), and enterprise-level connectivity speeds — thanks to a USB 3.0 dock.
The A8 comes in either a desktop or 2U-high rackmount configuration and features a remote management interface and the USB 3.0 interface for single cartridge internal and external RDX docking stations. Imation claims the USB 3.0 provides throughput of up to 3 to 4 times faster than USB 2.0 when performing data backup and restore, although this has yet to be benchmarked publicly.
Imation said it plans to release additional RDX-related products in 2011 that will include increased cartridge capacities, enhanced cloud storage applications, scalable and efficient storage, and government-grade (FIPS) security features.
Besides the new A8 multicartridge device and USB 3.0 docking stations, the current Imation RDX product line includes an RDX docking station with USB and SATA connections, cartridges available in 160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities, and Retrospect software featuring government-certified 256-bit AES encryption.
