the Pipeline

Putting things away

What kind of storage device offers removable and rewritable media such as a floppy disk with the spacious storage capacity of a hard disk?

It's a removable hard disk, the latest product from Iomega Corp., the storage vendor known for its line of high-capacity floppy drives called Zip drives.

Company officials say the new Iomega REV drive is well-suited as a backup and archiving solution for small offices, without the trade-offs of other options such as tape, external hard drives or rewritable CDs and DVDs.

"With tape, there's regular cleaning that needs to take place, as well as setup and configuration that isn't easy," said Bob Lutz, general manager for emerging technology at Iomega. "There's a reliability issue with CDs, because sometimes burns just don't work, and the media is fairly fragile. And external hard drives are susceptible to the viruses that affect system drives."

By comparison, the REV drive has the portability of tape and the performance and usability characteristics of a hard drive, Lutz said. It's good for storing data off-line and off-site but also offers fast data reads and writes, he said.

The REV system consists of two parts. The drive unit contains the read/write head and other electronics. The removable cartridge houses the 2.5-inch disk and spindle motor. Each cartridge stores up to 35G of data and is smaller than a deck of playing cards.

The REV costs about $400 for an external unit that connects to the server via a USB 2.0 interface. One disk cartridge is included. A version for internal installation costs $379.99 and includes one disk. Additional REV disks cost $59.99 each or $199.95 for a pack of four.

FalconStor Software Inc. officials have shipped their iSCSI Storage Server Solution for Microsoft Corp. Windows Storage Server 2003. Company officials announced the new product at the Storage Decisions conference late last month in New York.

The storage server is a full- featured solution designed for the Microsoft storage platform. Through a partnership program, FalconStor will make the product available through providers of Windows Storage Server 2003-based devices.

The iSCSI Storage Server is based on FalconStor's IPStor

enterprise-level software. It is for customers who want to centralize and consolidate their storage systems.

Infortrend Inc. officials have released a rack mounted Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) system offering bandwidth up to 800 megabytes/sec. The system can connect up to 500 Fibre Channel hard drives and offers redundant hot-swappable components to make it more

reliable.

Sporting the catchy name ER2510FS, the unit delivers flexibility, expansion and performance for storage-area networks and direct-attached storage.

Nexsan Technologies has released a new high-performance version of its ATAboy2 storage array, making use of an advanced RAID controller architecture. The ATAboy2x incorporates a new RAID controller design, with dual independent 2G Fibre Channel host ports. The effect is to deliver up to two-and-half times the performance of the previous ATAboy2 model.

Company officials say they can achieve sustained RAID 5 reads of more than 600 megabytes/sec, making the ATAboy2x an ideal platform for high-definition television, digital film and video, and other high-performance and high-capacity fixed-content applications.

Put it on the wire(less), baby

Iogear Inc. officials have released some new gadgets to make wireless networks more fun and functional. Or maybe just functional.

The new Bluetooth USB print adapter and Bluetooth USB/Parallel combo print adapters allow employees to share a single printer and print from wireless devices, including personal digital assistants.

The USB print adapter is a palm-sized, single-port device that allows users to wirelessly send print jobs from a Bluetooth-enabled computer. The combo print adapter works with computers or PDAs and can send print jobs wirelessly up to 330 feet.

The USB print adapter is priced at $69.95 and the combo print adapter is $99.95.

Iogear also released a new, secure wireless router using its Super-Fi technology. The 802.11g router has a built-in patch antenna that allows users to focus its signal on a specific location. That feature can keep the signal out of reach of snoopers, unlike standard routers that broadcast the signal in all directions.

SMC Networks Inc. recently released a 2.4 GHz 802.11g wireless bridge. The bridge can wirelessly connect two or more wired networks through an environment that is difficult to wire. In a setting, for example, in which two buildings on a campus each have a wired network, the bridge could connect them wirelessly.

XYZ, PDQ

PKware Inc., a developer of compression software, has released SecureZIP for Windows, the first product from the company's new SecureZIP product line.

SecureZIP is designed to protect confidential information and comply with new data privacy regulations. Based on the widely used .zip standard, the program provides strong encryption and authentication.

The product allows the use of passwords or digital certificates, giving it the ability to bridge environments that use public-key infrastructures and those that do not.

It also offers Policy Lockdown, the ability to enforce an organization's policies regarding the storage, transfer and security of high-value data.

John Zyskowski contributed to this article.