Tandberg Data 160GB 3.5" SATA 8459 User Manual

life of this connector. This physical advantage means that the RDX cartridge is specified to handle 

more than 5,000 load/unload actions, giving the RDX media a usage life span that is more than 50 

times that of tape media. 

The progression of tape drives and media is well known. To take advantage of storage capacity 

advancements, you must purchase new tape drives and new media. The RDX system has no 

system obsolescence!  RDX features both backward and forward compatibility.  Each year as 

higher-capacity cartridges are introduced they will work with your existing RDX drive. This means 

that all RDX systems are usable with all RDX media, now and into the future. For your budget, this 

means that the simplicity of the RDX design allows for a very low initial cost and a superior total 

cost of ownership when compared to any tape products.   

With the typical incremental backups used by tape users because of tape’s slow transfer rate 

performance, recovery of an entire backed up disk volume requires the time-consuming process of 

going through every piece of tape media that has been used in the backup process. And if the 

backup catalog is somehow contaminated, it can only be recreated by a time-consuming search of 

every piece of affected media. Even with an intact catalog, finding a targeted file requires a slow 

serial search of the correct tape cartridge. 

RDX cartridges are available in capacities ranging from 40 GB to 160 GB (native).  High native 

storage capacity combined with the RDX drive’s 100 GB/hour speed means full backups can be 

performed every day in much less time than it takes to do incremental backups to tape. 

RDX drives automatically keep track of how many times a cartridge has been loaded.  This saves 

the user from the tedious task of keeping track of how many times each cartridge has been used, 

especially in complex media rotation systems. 

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