New WORM tape options

There has been some recent action in the area of write-once read-many (WORM) tape.

Sony Electronics Inc. recently unveiled a new WORM tape option based on the company's AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) format. Spectra Logic Corp. recently began supporting the AIT WORM tape in its line of tape library products.

"Our strong points are cost and capacity," said Sharon Isaacson, product manager at Spectra Logic. She said new AIT-3 WORM cartridges cost about $.90 per gigabyte, while a 5.25-inch MO platter costs about $9 per gigabyte. A single AIT-3 tape cartridge can store up to 100 G of uncompressed data, compared to 9.1 G for the MO platter.

WORM tape, however, has not enjoyed the same support in the document imaging community as optical disks have, primarily because of slower access times compared to random-access disks. Tape cartridges often have to advance to the section of tape that contains the sought-after data.