 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| OTC Pink: QBAK | |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Headquarters | Simi Valley, California |
| Products | Magnetic tape data storage |
Qualstar Corporation is an American manufacturer of magnetic tape data storage products, based in Simi Valley, California. It was founded in 1984 as a 9-track tape drive manufacturer and now makes tape library products. The company sold its last 9-track tape drive in 2006 [1] and as of March 2006 has sold all remaining parts inventory to Vinastar, an aftermarket vendor. [2]
Qualstar announced the TLS-4000 Series tape library family in 1994 and began shipment in 1995. Initially using Exabyte 8mm tape drives, the TLS-4000 Series was the first library product line to automate Sony's popular AIT drives. Leveraging the basic TLS design, Qualstar subsequently introduced the TLS-6000 Series for DLT and SDLT drives, the TLS-5000 Series for Sony SAIT drives and the TLS-8000 Series for LTO drives. The TLS-2000 Series for 4mm drives was also produced for a limited time. By 2011, only select models of the TLS-8000 family remain in production.
In 2001, the company introduced the first RLS-Series of rack mountable tape libraries. A number of models supporting AIT, SAIT, SDLT and LTO tape drive technologies were produced. The RLS-8000 Series for LTO technology continues in production. Various models house up to 44 tape cartridges and four LTO SAS or Fibre Channel tape drives in a 5U high package. In 2010 Qualstar introduced the RLS-8500 Series that house up to 114 tapes and five LTO drives in a 10U high mechanism.
Qualstar entered the enterprise tape library market in 2006 with the XLS-Series Enterprise Library System. Using patented technology, the XLS-Series introduced interchangeable Library Resource Modules (LRMs)and storage modules (MEMs) in highly flexible configurations that could be combined to exceed 7,000 tapes and 128 LTO tape drives. The XLS family has continued to expand, adding four more LRM models and a second MEM module. XLS models currently span capacities from 160 slots to over 11,000 slots and can house over 150 drives.
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic tape can with relative ease record and playback audio, visual, and binary computer data.
Tandberg Data GmbH is a company focused on data storage products, especially streamers, headquartered in Dortmund, Germany. They are the only company still selling drives that use the QIC and VXA formats, but also produce LTO along with autoloaders, tape libraries, NAS devices, RDX Removable Disk Drives, Media and Virtual Tape Libraries.
A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. 130 mm (5.25 in) and 90 mm (3.5 in) discs were the most common sizes. In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the compact disc, Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven. The technology was introduced commercially in 1985. Although optical, they normally appear as hard disk drives to an operating system and can be formatted with any file system. Magneto-optical drives were common in some countries, such as Japan, but have fallen into disuse.
Quantum Corporation is a data storage, management, and protection company that provides technology to store, manage, archive, and protect video and unstructured data throughout the data life cycle. Their products are used by enterprises, media and entertainment companies, government agencies, big data companies, and life science organizations. Quantum is headquartered in San Jose, California and has offices around the world, supporting customers globally in addition to working with a network of distributors, VARs, DMRs, OEMs and other suppliers.
Digital Data Storage (DDS) is a computer data storage technology that is based upon the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) format that was developed during the 1980s. DDS is primarily intended for use as off-line storage, especially for generating backup copies of working data.
Digital Linear Tape (DLT; previously called CompacTape) is a magnetic-tape data storage technology developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1984 onwards. In 1994, the technology was purchased by Quantum Corporation, who manufactured drives and licensed the technology and trademark. A variant with higher capacity is called Super DLT (SDLT). The lower cost "value line" was initially manufactured by Benchmark Storage Innovations under license from Quantum. Quantum acquired Benchmark in 2002.
Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) is a discontinued high-speed, high-capacity magnetic tape data storage format developed and controlled by Sony. It was introduced in 1996 to utilise Advanced Metal Evaporated (AME) technology. It competed mainly against the DLT, LTO, DAT/DDS, and VXA formats. AIT uses 8mm tape in a cassette similar to Video8. Super AIT (SAIT) is a higher capacity variant using wider half inch (1/2") tape in a larger, single-spool cartridge. Both AIT and SAIT use the helical scan method of reading and writing to the tape.
Linear Tape-Open (LTO), also known as the LTO Ultrium format, is a magnetic tape data storage technology used for backup, data archiving, and data transfer. It was originally developed in the late 1990s as an open standards alternative to the proprietary magnetic tape formats that were available at the time. Upon introduction, LTO rapidly defined the super tape market segment and has consistently been the best-selling super tape format. The latest generation as of 2021, LTO-9, can hold 18 TB in one cartridge.
Storage Technology Corporation was a data storage technology company headquartered in Louisville, Colorado. New products include data retention systems, which it calls "information lifecycle management" (ILM).
The 3480 tape format is a magnetic tape data storage format developed by IBM. The tape is one-half inch (13 mm) wide and is packaged in a 4 in × 5 in × 1 in cartridge. The cartridge contains a single reel; the takeup reel is inside the tape drive.
Storage Technology Corporation created several magnetic tape data storage formats. These are commonly used with large computer systems, typically in conjunction with a robotic tape library. The most recent format is the T10000. StorageTek primarily competed with IBM in this market, and continued to do so after its acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2005 and as part of the Sun Microsystems acquisition by Oracle in 2009.
Overland Storage Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sphere 3D Corp. It has acquired Tandberg Data shortly before being acquired by Sphere 3D itself. The two subsidiaries were later rebranded under the common Overland-Tandberg brand.
9-track tape is a format for magnetic-tape data storage, introduced with the IBM System/360 in 1964. The 1⁄2 inch (12.7 mm) wide magnetic tape media and reels have the same size as the earlier IBM 7-track format it replaced, but the new format has eight data tracks and one parity track for a total of nine parallel tracks. Data is stored as 8-bit characters, spanning the full width of the tape. Various recording methods have been employed during its lifetime as tape speed and data density increased, including PE, GCR, and NRZI. Tapes come in various sizes up to 3,600 feet (1,100 m) in length.
Magnetic-tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital recording.
The IBM Storage product portfolio includes disk, flash, tape, NAS storage products, storage software and services. IBM's approach is to focus on data management.
The IBM 3590 is a series of tape drives and corresponding magnetic tape data storage media formats developed by IBM. The first drive, having the IBM product number 3590, was introduced in 1995 under the nickname Magstar. The 3590 series of tape drives and media are not compatible with the IBM 3592 line of drives that replaced it. They can store up to 60 GB of data (uncompressed). This family superseded the IBM 3480 Family of tape drives popular in 1980s and 1990s.
The IBM 3592 is a series of enterprise-class tape drives and corresponding magnetic tape data storage media formats developed by IBM. The first drive, having the IBM product number 3592, was introduced under the nickname Jaguar. The next drive was the TS1120, also having the nickname Jaguar. As of October 2023, the latest and current drive is the TS1170. The 3592 line of tape drives and media is not compatible with the IBM 3590 series of drives, which it superseded. This series can store up to 50 TB of data (uncompressed) on a cartridge and has a native data transfer rate of up to 400 MB/s. In August 2023 IBM announced the TS1170 tape drive with 50TB cartridges, more than 2.5 times larger than LTO-9 cartridges.
The DEC 4000 AXP is a series of departmental server computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation introduced on 10 November 1992. These systems formed part of the first generation of systems based on the 64-bit Alpha AXP architecture, and at the time of introduction, ran Digital's OpenVMS AXP or OSF/1 AXP operating systems.
Spectra Logic Corporation is a computer data storage company based in Boulder, Colorado in the United States. The company builds backup and archive technology for secondary storage to protect data after it migrates from primary disk. Spectra Logic's primary product is tape libraries. The company was founded in 1979, and is a privately held company.
The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is a file system that allows files stored on magnetic tape to be accessed in a similar fashion to those on disk or removable flash drives. It requires both a specific format of data on the tape media and software to provide a file system interface to the data.
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