Sony Electronics has extended its Advanced Intelligent Tape™ (AIT) format to a fourth-generation drive, strengthening the comprehensive format's ability to satisfy storage needs from small business data protection to enterprise back up.

With a compact 3.5-inch drive form-factor and a small 8mm media format, AIT-4 drives and media fulfill Sony's aggressive commitment to double storage capacity and transfer rates from one AIT generation to the next. The drives feature up to 200GB of native storage capacity (520GB with 2.6:1 compression) and a sustained native transfer rate of up to 24 MB/second.

"AIT-4 technology establishes new AIT format milestones for both capacity and performance on the AIT technology roadmap," said Hiroyuki Minamiya, senior marketing manager for Sony Electronics' Tape Storage Division. "The format will continue to evolve to stay ahead of the needs of small business users and to keep pace with ever-expanding data storage needs of enterprise departments. AIT-4 is the highest density tape drive in the world, allowing our customers to manage fewer tapes and conserve space."

Sony continues to enhance the AIT format with every generation, and has outlined a future roadmap that includes up to a sixth generation member before the end of the decade. The company has also realized its goal for backward read/write compatibility with each previous generation of media. AIT-4 drives are backward read/write compatible with AIT-3 media, and read compatible with AIT-2 and AIT-1 media.