Quantum Corp. has announced the availability of its LTO-4 Half-Height (HH) tape drive. Targeted at midrange and enterprise customers concerned about disaster recovery and companies seeking backup for their remote offices, the drive offers the same performance, security and reliability as full-height LTO-4 tape drives. In addition, the LTO-4 HH drive provides up to 800 GB native capacity and transfer rates up to 432 GB/hr.

"Quantum has developed an easy-to-use storage solution that offers the same performance and capacity as competitors' full-height offerings," said Kevin Koski, product manager, server storage at Equus, a Quantum reseller. "Customers not only achieve the highest in LTO-4 performance but also are able to realise the benefits associated with the smaller format taking up less data center space."

As mentioned in the official press release, the LTO-4 HH includes a feature called Green Mode, which reduces power consumption by shutting off power to components inside the drive when it's idle or on standby (not reading or writing data). The LTO-4 HH provides AES 256-bit native encryption, WORM cartridge support and SmartVerify, which concurrently verifies all data written to the tape.

"Organisations continue to struggle with increased data growth and retention without increased budget, and now on top of that they have the additional challenges of addressing security and power consumption," said Tom Hammond, product manager for Quantum. "As a leader in backup, recovery and archive, Quantum's LTO-4 HH provides customers a secure, high-performance tape backup solution that is reliable and power efficient – all at an affordable price."