Encouraged by strong industry endorsements, 3M expects tape software currently in development to expand the functionality of minicartridge technology well beyond backup/restore applications.

According to Michael Stevens, business development director, 3M Data Storage Tape Technology Division, 3M's strategic relationships with Chili Pepper Software (Atlanta, Georgia) and PGSoft Inc. (Pacific Grove, Calif.) will help redefine the way that tape is used.

Due for release later this year, the two software products will be compatible with tape drives and media based on both the Quarter-Inch Cartridge (QIC) class of standards and the new Travan specification.

Developed by 3M and licensed to eight of the world's leading manufacturers of tape drives and media, Travan technology offers users a 200-plus percent capacity increase over corresponding QIC platforms, while maintaining backward compatibility with the installed base of 12 million QIC drives and more than 200 million QIC minicartridges.

"These software initiatives will provide users with easy access to a wide range of new applications, including hierarchical storage management (HSM), near-line storage, large file transport and direct recording and playback of computer data, audio, video and multimedia files," Stevens said. "These applications will make tape an even more expansive, useful and dynamic storage medium."

New Applications for Tape
"Our alliance with 3M will result in development of HSM software that will enable desktop tape drives to provide near-line storage as well as backup," said Richard Onyon, president, Chili Pepper software. "HSM software automatically tracks file activity on the hard drive, and, based on user-defined thresh holds, compresses and/or archives inactive files to intermediate storage, automatically retrieving them when needed."

Chili Pepper Software currently markets Infinite Disk -- a file management package based on HSM that relies on diskettes, optical, floptical, or removable hard drives for intermediate storage. Available for DOS and Windows users, Infinite Disk tracks file activity on the hard drive. Based on user defined thresholds, the software compresses and/or archives inactive files to more affordable storage and automatically retrieves them when needed.

Our technology manages all the information and data that users collect... automatically," added Onyon. "In effect the computer now manages itself, so the user won't have to. Compression, archiving, backup... it's all worry-free and automatic."

The new software being developed by 3M and Chili Pepper Software will enable those seldom or never-used files to be archived to high-capacity Travan minicartridges. "We are convinced HSM will make the new Travan technology an even more useful, permanent part of the desktop computer system," said Onyon. "HSM is a great solution to the problem of hard drive capacity, in a world where demands for disk space continue to mushroom. And because tape is so cost effective, HSM will further reduce the cost of storage for many businesses."

"Infinite Disk technology supersedes all of the old disk compression approaches," said Michael Peterson, an analyst at Strategic Research Corporation, Santa Barbara, Calif. "Today's PC users will appreciate a storage solution that combines such complementary products to manage their growing data storage needs."

Expansive File Transport Medium
At the same time, 3M is working with PGSoft, a spinoff of Digital Research, to develop a range of software products that will help turn tape into a general purpose storage medium.

The new software will allow tape to serve as an expansive file transport medium, in place of standard diskettes, and support the direct recording and playback of computer data, audio, video, and other multimedia files without the file having to consume additional hard disk space, according to Tom Rolander, president and chief executive officer, PGSoft.

With tape as a file transport medium, users will be able to quickly identify and transfer up to multi-gigabyte size files between systems using high-capacity, relatively inexpensive minicartridges as though the cartridges were diskettes.

According to Rolander, the first product developed by the two companies will enable tape to become an extension to DOS and Windows devices, thereby sharing read/write privileges similar to hard disks.

From the user's perspective, tape will become the "T" drive, making it easily accessible with standard Windows applications, including the Windows File Manager. The products being developed by 3M and PGSoft will work with tape drives from multiple vendors, finally making tape an easy-to-use, interchangeable solution for the desktop, 3M's Stevens added.

A prototype of the software was demonstrated during a QIC standards meeting at Rancho Bernardo, Calif., on March 13. 3M and PGSoft plan to introduce the new product by the end of 1995.

Stevens added that the new software also will eliminate the learning curve associated with using tape for backup/restore applications. This will save users both productivity time and dollars -- key ingredients in attracting the millions of new PC users to tape technology.

Both companies expect the alliance to fuel significant growth in the "attach rate" of tape drives to PCs. The installed base of minicartridge tape drives currently exceeds 12 million units, according to several market research organizations.

"This inventive software approach evolves tape from a passive to an active role in desktop storage," said Ray Freeman, president, Freeman Associates, Inc., a Santa Barbara-based market research firm. "It plugs the gap between the too-low capacity of diskettes and the higher-cost, non-transportable nature of hard disks."

"Minicartridge tape has never really been used for file transfer," Stevens said. "With the demand for cost-effective storage solutions increasing by the hour, tape is the only viable technology platform to meet this need."

"As digital multimedia and on-line access continue their exponential growth, storage options must keep pace," Rolander said. "With this development, the readily accessible tape drive now becomes an excellent mechanism to store and play multimedia files."

Chip Off The CD-ROM Block
The 3M/PGSoft solution will take advantage of both the popular ISO 9660 file format now used for CD-ROM drives and the corresponding operating system extension, MSCDEX. Microsoft currently bundles the MSCDEX extension with DOS and Windows software.

In doing so, the 3M/PGSoft technology will eliminate the need for new device drivers as tape drives are introduced. By standardizing on ISO 9660 as a tape file format, 3M/PGSoft products will be compatible with all leading operating systems, including DOS, Windows 3.1x, Windows95 and Windows NT.

This compatibility will eliminate the need for application developers to build tape device drivers with each application. According to Stevens, elimination of this technical obstacle will provide OEMs with added incentive to incorporate tape drives into their systems, 3M's Stevens said.

Users now rely on various alternatives to store and manage capacity-intensive files such as video, audio and still color images, said PGSoft's Rolander, noting that tape remains the most cost-effective way to store these files.

Travan is a trademark of 3M.
Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Copyright 1996 Imation. All rights reserved.