HP Storage Works 448

This external SCSI drive from HP runs on Ultrium 2 tapes (LTO 2) and is meant for small to mid-sized businesses. It supports 200 GB native and 400 GB compressed backups. They drive is fully backward compatible (read/write) with the previous generations of Ultrium media. This drive even comes with One-Button Disaster Recovery (OBDR) support, which needs to be activated from its firmware. This feature can restore an entire system using a single Ultrium 448 tape drive and data cartridge. 

The drive compression ratio is 2:1 and claims to give sustained data transfer rate at the rate of 48MB/s. 

Coming to performance, the drive was able to backup 16 GB data in 12 minutes and 42 seconds in native mode, and the time taken in compressed mode was exactly a minute higher at 11 minutes 42 seconds. Restoring time was slightly faster for data backed up in compressed mode. It took only 12 minutes and 5 seconds for compressed, while the uncompressed restore rate was longer by a half a minute. It took 15 seconds to backup a single 794 MB compressed file. 

However, its cost per GB is even higher than its faster cousin, the SW960, coming to Rs. 21 per GB. Its upfront cost is however, less than half that of the 960. So the drive's initial price and good performance make it a good buy. It also ships with YOSEMITE TapeWare Backup software. The running cost of this drive is a bit higher than that of HP's 960. The cost per GB works out to Rs. 21 uncompressed and Rs. 10 for compressed data.

BOTTOM LINE: Overall, the drive is a good buy given the performance. RQS# E24 or SMS 131124 to 9811800601

Price: Drive-Rs. 114,780, Cartridge-Rs. 4,200




Warranty:
Not specified by vendor




Cartridge type:
Ultrium 2




Capacity:
200GB native, 400GB Compressed 




Avg. througput:
77.99GB/Hr




Contact:
Hewlett-Packard India, Gurgaon. 




Tel:
2838206. Email: singh.manavi@hp.com