Both Sun and IBM have revealed their latest efforts to convince us that there is still plenty of life left in tape driven data storage, and the big secret, literally, is built-in encryption. IBM were first off the blocks on Tuesday with the news that they were making encryption technology available to users of their System Storage TS1120 drives, as in available for an upgrade fee if you already have one but free if you are ordering a new unit that is. With a native capacity of 500Gb and transfer rates of 104Mb/s, it all sounds none too shabby.
Sun followed on Wednesday with the equally snappily named StorageTek Crypto-Ready T10000 tape drive (and with such a memorable name if you were at the annual Sun users conference last November you will no doubt recall them discussing it then) which features the same 500GB of native capacity as the IBM unit, but a faster 120Mb/s native transfer rate, oh yes and the ability to encrypt data as it is written to the cartridge of course.