Down But Not Out In The Empire Of Rust

Okay, now that I have that off my chest...

I was reading the latest catalogue from Software Warehouse on the way home tonight, and I noticed that they are selling some new tape drives, including the Sony SAIT. Now, I'd never heard of SAIT before, so I thought I'd do a quick Google to find some details, only I ended up at Google News instead and it took me half an hour to finally stop cursing and pry myself loose.

Anyway, one downside of the 12-month doubling period for hard disk densities I mentioned in the previous episode was that the capacity of backup tapes wasn't growing nearly as fast, so instead of (as it was in the old days) one tape backing up multiple disks, it took multiple tapes to back up one disk. Which was rather less convenient than the other way round.

Sony have come up with an interesting solution to the problem with SAIT: They cheated.*

Check out the physical specifications of the drive:

5.25" Full Height Extended (5.8"W x 3.3" H x 12" D)

I haven't seen a full height 5¼-inch drive for years, and 12 inches deep?! Okay, so it can store 500GB compared to AIT-4's 200GB, but AIT-4 would actually fit inside a normal computer! AIT drives are usually half-height 3½-inch devices, about 4" by 6" by 1.6"... So about one sixth the size of the SAIT.

Bring back 9-track tapes, I say. At least you could watch them spin while the blinkenlights blinked...

* By the way, Sony guys and girls, your website lists "Desktops Computers" as a destination in the menu. Either they're awfully big or you've got a typo.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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