VXA is a tape backup format originally created by Ecrix and now owned by Tandberg Data

Tandberg Data

Tandberg Data GmbH is a company focused on data storage products, especially streamers, headquartered in Dortmund, Germany. They are the only company still selling drives that use the QIC and VXA formats, but also produce LTO along with autoloaders, tape libraries, NAS devices, RDX Removable Disk...

. After the merger between Ecrix and Exabyte, VXA was produced by Exabyte Corporation. On November 20, 2006, Exabyte was purchased by Tandberg Data who has since stopped further development of the format.

Exabyte and Ecrix describe the data format as "packet technology." Since VXA is based on helical scan

Helical scan

Helical scan is a method of recording high bandwidth signals onto magnetic tape. It is used in reel-to-reel video tape recorders, video cassette recorders, digital audio tape recorders, and some computer tape drives....

 technology, data is written across the tape from side to side in helical strips. The novel part of VXA packet technology is that each stripe starts with a unique packet ID and ends with an ECC packet checksum. As each stripe is written to tape, it is immediately read back to verify that the write was successful. If the write was not 100% successful the packet can be rewritten at another point on the tape without stopping. When the data is read back, the packets are reassembled into a "buffer" by their packet ID. The buffer has 3 additional ECCs to ensure data integrity. Another aspect of VXA is that there are 2 read heads for each stripe, slightly offset in relation to each other to allow for more flexibility in reading tapes written by other drives. Due to the relatively slow tape speed inherent to helical scan technology, the drive is able to stop and start the tape much more quickly to avoid the need to backhitch.

The VXA format competes mainly against the DDS

Digital Data Storage

Digital Data Storage is a format for storing computer data on a Digital Audio Tape .DDS uses tape with a width of 3.8mm, with the exception of the latest formats, DAT 160 and DAT 320, which are 8mm wide...

, and DLT-IV

Digital Linear Tape

Digital Linear Tape is a magnetic tape data storage technology developed by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1984 onwards. In 1994 the technology was purchased by Quantum Corporation, who currently manufactures drives and licenses the technology and trademark. A variant with higher capacity...

formats.

Overview

Generation	VXA-1	VXA-2	VXA-3	VXA-4	VXA-5
Release Date	1999	2002	2005	TBA	TBA
Max Native (uncompressed) Capacity (GB)	33	80	160	320	640
Max Speed (MB/s)	3	6	12	24	48

VXA-3

Exabyte released two different product lines based on VXA-3 technology, VXA-320 in 2005 and VXA-172 in 2006. VXA-172 drives are limited to 86 GB per tape cartridge, but can be unlocked (for a fee) to remove the limit. They are otherwise the same.

Cartridge / tape

Mechanism / drive

Tape and drive together

External links

• ECMA 316 Specification of VXA-1.
• ECMA 222 Specification of ALDC, the data compression standard for VXA-1.
• VXA Alliance