Tape drive vendors are making it difficult for buyers to pass on the latest and greatest LTO-3 drives, with prices falling to an average of 3.6% less than an LTO-2 model, and LTO-3's media price-per-gigabyte at $.30/GB vs. LTO-2's $0.31/GB. That's in marked contrast to SDLT drive and media pricing, which remained nearly unchanged for the month. Hewlett-Packard's internal Ultrium 230 LTO-1 drive, meanwhile, has reached end-of-life, and we are discontinuing coverage of the category. We will continue to track LTO-1 media prices.

Hard disk drives

Tape drives

Media