HP made its entry into the Linear Tape Open (LTO) second generation, unveiling the the HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 tape drive — a device HP promises will be the industry’s first commercially available Generation 2 Ultrium tape drive for enterprise-class data protection needs, particularly where the backup window is shrinking. HP 3000 business manager Dave Wilde said the company is investigating support of the Ultrium products on the HP 3000 line, even though the vendor will stop selling 3000s in October of next year.

HP said the new tape drive sets standards for performance, capacity and reliability with the lowest cost of ownership of any product in its class. Fully read- and write-compatible with previous generations, the Ultrium 460 delivers a compressed capacity of 400 Gb on a single cartridge and a transfer rate of 60 Mb/second. HP also announced the HP Ultrium 400Gb data cartridge. The new tape drive and media minimize network interruption by protecting nearly 216Gb per hour of data and storing up to 400Gb on one piece of media — double the capacity of Ultrium 1 tapes.

There’s been some testing of HP 3000s in the California labs with LTO devices this fall, as HP studies support of Ultrium. One test showed the 3000 could back up at 23Mb per second using a top-end N-Class server. The LTO units will be a faster alternative to the DLT 7000 and DLT 8000 backup units already serving HP 3000 customers. HP expects to ship its newest LTO2 units sometime next year.