Imation Ships Two Millionth 3590E Tape Cartridge

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Imation today announced the shipment of its two millionth 3590E extended capacity half-inch tape cartridge. These cartridges are available from Imation as the Imation Black Watch 3590E and from IBM as the IBM 3590 Extended High Performance Cartridge Tape. Imation developed the 3590E tape cartridge in tandem with IBM and launched the technology in February 2000.

“We are pleased with the wide and fast acceptance of the 3590E format among end-users who demand high performance and reliability in their tape backup solution,” said Frank Russomanno, Imation Corp. vice president and general manager, Imation’s Data Storage Media and Services business. “We look forward to continuing to supply customers with 3590E and strengthening our 50 year relationship of developing and manufacturing tape with IBM.”

The Imation Black Watch 3590E cartridge and IBM 3590 Extended High Performance Cartridge Tape feature 256 tracks and a native capacity of 40GB per cartridge (up to 120GB with 3:1 compression) when used with an IBM TotalStorage(TM) Enterprise Tape Drive 3590 Model E. When used with the new IBM 3590 Model H tape drive, the native cartridge capacity is 60GB (up to 180GB with 3:1 compression). The cartridge supports the drive’s native data transfer rate of 14 MB/sec, one of the fastest among half-inch tape formats. The Imation Black Watch(TM) 3590E tape cartridges are also compatible with the IBM 3590 Model B drives, providing native capacity of 20GB per cartridge (60GB with 3:1 compression) and supports the drive’s native data transfer rate of 9MB/sec.

“This milestone marks another highlight in our on-going relationship with Imation on the development of tape for our 3590 family of drives,” said John Teale, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director of Tape Technology. “Customers appreciate the high performance and reliability of 3590 enterprise tape technology from Imation and IBM and are continuing to implement it to meet their data storage needs.”

IBM 3590 Tape drives are installed around the world, demonstrating the broad acceptance of the platform. 3590 technology is an ideal solution for batch processing, data interchange and distribution, storage management and backup and restore applications.

Imation continues to support the 3590 Model B, 3590 Model E and the new 3590 Model H tape technology platforms. According to IBM, more than 90,000 3590 drives have been shipped since its launch in 1995. The two millionth cartridge milestone for Imation can be attributed to the long-term success that the 3590 platform has had. Imation also expects to reach a 15 millionth cartridge shipment milestone by the end of 2002 for the Black Watch(TM) 3590 tape cartridge format.

Imation and IBM developed and manufactured the first magnetic recording computer tape technology 50 years ago with the introduction of seven-track linear recording systems for mainframes. In May 1952, IBM announced the first computer tape drive, the IBM Model 726. As part of 3M, Imation shipped the first computer tape to IBM in December 1952, for distribution in their new tape drives.

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