Tandberg has produced some very nice LTO solutions with its 420LTO and 220LTO drives. Both are solid and dependable units, easy on the power and space requirements, and both come complete with all the hardware and software they need to get going - with the exception of a SCSI interface. It would be nice to see other interfaces, since small businesses might not want the extra cost of a SCSI host adapter for the sole purpose of doing backups.

If you're choosing between the two, the advantage of the 420LTO over the 220LTO is its higher storage capacity. As far as practical transfer speed, the 420LTO's isn't all that much faster than the 220LTO's, so that's not something upon which we would base a purchase decision. But backup capacity is crucial, and only you know if 100 GB uncompressed storage space per tape will be enough for your needs; if it is, the 220LTO is a fine choice.

If you need the extra 100 GB of capacity, the 420LTO is also a great option, although we'd have preferred to see higher transfer rates. But like all computer hardware, there's always a faster option available - Tandberg has an LTO-3 drive on the market - you just have to pay more for it.

Editor's Opinion

I hope the day arrives in the not-too-distant future when tape backup drives with 100 GB or higher capacities reach the home consumer market. With consumer hard disks of 400 GB common, optical backups on DVDs are on the verge of becoming useless, and people are resorting to buying extra hard disks to back up their data in case of a hard drive failure. A 100 GB consumer tape drive would solve a lot of problems, for me anyway, although other storage media such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs could be another solution.

slide show: Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers

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