Quantum Corp. next week will unveil a backup and recovery system it says is faster than tape drives and also can be easily integrated into a company's IT architecture.

Tape libraries have long been the cornerstone of backup and recovery, and Quantum's tape drives, using digital linear tape, are the de facto standard for open systems. But as more companies operate around the clock, they can't afford the downtime needed to back up data through tape drives. So Quantum designed a system made of low-cost IDE disks that it says can move that data 100 times faster than tape and costs only a little more than standard tape technology.

Quantum chief technology officer Kevin Daly says the system's speed is critical to backup and recovery processes.

The Quantum DX30 packs 30 drives into a 2-inch space, stores more than 3 terabytes of data, and moves the data at a transfer rate of 40 Mbytes per second. Available in June, the DX30 is priced at $45,000.

While tape libraries cost about a third of that price, they're typically only a quarter as fast. A standard hard-disk RAID storage system that performs at similar speeds to the DX30 would cost more than twice as much.

Steve Duplessie, an analyst with the Enterprise Storage Group, says tape has become less compelling for backup and recovery and that companies will most likely use tape to store information. "Quantum is the first to take a cheap disk and make it look and act like a tape library," Duplessie says. "It's the beginning of a trend that will become large for big and small companies."

Quantum built the DX30 to fit into standard backup and recovery architectures: Companies won't have to change their server interconnects; their backup and recovery software from Computer Associates, Legato, or Veritas; or the archiving interconnects. Though it replaces tape storage connected to the server, it can still handle some of the functions of tape storage, such as processing the data to tape libraries for archiving.