VXA
Tape Data Recovery - VXA
VXA is a tape backup format introduced by Ecrix in 1999. When Ecrix merged with Exabyte Corporation, VXA was produced by Exabyte. On November 20, 2006, Tandberg Data purchased Exabyte, and so VXA is currently owned by Tandberg Data. VXA technology revolutionized backup and restoration of data on tape. Today it is the new standard for SMB/Departmental tape backup.
VXA is commonly known as ‘packet’ technology, a variation of helical scan technology. As opposed to the linear method which writes data in continuous and predefined linear tracks, data is written in addressable packets along the tape. VXA drives, autoloaders and tapes could read and write data in packets just like the Internet.
This packet method makes it more reliable and facilitates speedy error recovery. VXA also offered exceptional transfer speeds and scalable tape capacities. Compared to DDS-4 and other similar products from its competitors, VXA products were tested capable of restoring data up to 180 times even from VXA tapes that have been boiled, frozen solid, and dunked in hot coffee. It is easier to migrate from older tape technologies to VXA. With all these features, VXA has become the new standard in tape backup.
There are five generations of VXA. The first generation, VXA-1 had a maximum capacity of 33GB of uncompressed data and offered maximum speed of 3 MB/s. successive generations improved on both speed and capacity. The latest model released in 2005 (VXA-3) had a capacity of 160 GB and speed of 12 MB/s. There were two different product lines based on VXA-3 technology, VXA-320 and VXA-172. VXA-172 drives are limited to 86 GB per tape cartridge, but can be unlocked to remove the limit.
VXA format competes against DDS, SLR, AIT, Travan, and DLT-V formats.
