Ecrix VXA-1 Supports IEEE 1394/FireWire Interface For PC - Product Announcement

Computer Technology Review, July, 2001

Ecrix announced availability of the IEEE 1394 interface, also known as FireWire or i.LINK, for the Ecrix VXA-1 tape drive on the PC platform. The VXA-1 is the first tape drive to support FireWire/IEEE 1394/i.LINK interfaces on Intel-x86 personal computers. It offers users a low-cost interface with hot plug-and-play capabilities as well as the fastest and largest capacity IEEE 1394 tape drive available.

The VXA-1 solution consists of an external translucent VXA-1 tape drive with an integrated IEEE 1394 interface, comes bundled with Dantz Retrospect Desktop Backup software and is compatible with other Windows backup applications such as VERITAS Backup Exec. Like the earlier Mac-only version it backs up 33GB of data to a single-cartridge at 3MB/sec (66GB at 6 MB/sec with 2:1 compressible data).

IEEE 1394 is capable of transferring data at speeds of up to 400Mbps, making it choice for high-speed data storage. Other FireWire benefits include its flexible connectivity and the ability to link as many as 63 devices. VXA FireWire drives "hot plug" quickly and efficiently with their user-friendly automatic configuration.

The VXA-1 FireWire includes the translucent external VXA-1 tape drive, FireWire cable, 66GB VXAtape V17 cartridge, cleaning cartridge, power cord (US and Canadian), SCSI terminator, documentation, and Dantz Retrospect backup software.