Jan

30

DLT Tape Backup Technology

Posted by admin

January 30, 2007 |

DLT has been around for a while. It was developed by a company called Digital Equipment Corporation in 1984, but was bought by Quantum in 1994. Quantum is the major player in the DLT market, so you’ll see me using their stats a lot. DLT uses a specialized compression algorithm, called Digital Lempel Ziv 1 (DLZ1), that allows for high speed and high capacity data storage. DLT tape drives also record in a linear fashion, unlike former helical scan drives. Helical Scan drives would record lines of data on a slant on drives. This allowed for high density rates, but becomes very unwieldy for error correction.

DLT drives right the first data streams the entire length of the tape. When the drive hits the end of the tape, it starts writing further down the tape width in a backwards fashion. Some DLT drives also write the data in an angled fashion on the track to allow for higher data density. DLT drives also incorporate different tape guidance systems that allow for longer tape life.

Here’s a spec chart for DLT:

dlt-spec-chart.JPG

Source: Quantum DLT Handbook


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