LaCie announced today that it has expanded its SCSI Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) product line with the new 100GB (native) AIT3 drive. LaCie's new AIT3 is a high-performance tape drive that stores up to 260GB (compressed) of digital video, multimedia and complex graphics. With the addition of the new AIT drive, LaCie now offers AIT +, AIT2 and AIT3 drives with capacities ranging from 35GB to 100GB (native).

LaCie's new AIT3 drive provides twice the capacity of the AIT2 drives and double the native transfer rate--12 MB/s. At this speed, the drive can back up a Gigabyte of data in less than two minutes. The higher-performance drive does all of this while maintaining full read- and write-compatibility with the previous generationAIT+ and AIT2 cartridges.

"We continue to expand our AIT product line as part of our commitment to meet our customers' changing requirements with backup and recovery solutions that provide the best combination of capacity, speed, convenience and economy," said Christine Bellardinelli, LaCie's Tape Product Manager.

Increased Performance, Higher Reliability

LaCie AIT drives provide graphics and video professionals with high-capacity backups and other key benefits that distinguish them from other tape drives:
* The internal Active Head Cleaner(tm) mechanism senses contamination build-up and automatically removes debris, dramatically reducing the need for periodic head cleaning.
* A specially designed variable-speed, self-cooling fan automatically dissipates heat.
* Patented Hyper Metal(tm) laminated heads deliver higher signal output, improve recording density and enhance data recovery.
* AIT media features the Memory-In-Cassette (MIC) memory chip which promotes faster data retrieval speeds

Offering an average media life of 30,000 passes, the robust media has a near-diamond-hard protective carbon layer for increased durability. AIT high-density tape also improves efficiency by enabling users to store more data on a smaller amount of tape (the 8mm tapes are the size of an audio tape).

These features plus generous buffers, an average head life of 50,000 hours and a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rating of 250,000 hours make the LaCie AIT drives the ideal backup/recovery solution for businesses and graphics professionals alike.

Price, Availability

LaCie AIT3 drives and cartridges are available through LaCie resellers and mail order partners with an SRP of $4,299. The drives come with cables and the 5-client Retrospect backup software from Dantz and are backed with a 3-year warranty. Additional AIT cartridges are available with SRPs starting at $79 for the 35/70GB cartridge.