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tape drive Last modified: Friday, June 21, 2002

A device, like a tape recorder, that reads data from and writes it onto a tape. Tape drives have data capacities of anywhere from a few hundred kilobytes to several gigabytes. Their transfer speeds also vary considerably. Fast tape drives can transfer as much as 20MB (megabytes) per second. The disadvantage of tape drives is that they are sequential-access devices, which means that to read any particular block of data, you need to read all the preceding blocks. This makes them much too slow for general-purpose storage operations. However, they are the least expensive media for making backups.

Exabyte's home page  Home page for Exabyte Corporation, a manufacturer of tape drive products. This page offers links to products and technology, support and service, and company information. Comparing helical-scan and digital linear tape (DLT) technology From Quantum, this technical information paper compares DLT tape drives to helical-scan tape technology. Transitional Technology, Inc. Home page of Transitional Technology Inc., designer and manufacturer of 8mm, AIT, DLT, and DTF tape subsystems and libraries. Yahoo!'s tape drives page Yahoo!'s directory of tape drives.