Imagine a world where removable disk and tape can reside in the same enclosure—and you can take them both on the road, too. Stop imagining. The RAID eXchangeable TeraPack (RXT) from Spectra Logic Corp., Boulder, CO, does all that and more. Each shoebox-sized RXT can hold up to 12 2.5-inch SATA disks or two 3.5-inch disks, providing up to 960GB per TeraPack enclosure. The packs offer RAID 0, 1 and 5; act like LTO-2; and work with most major backup software products.

If you want to use this at a remote office, just buy a standalone RTX docking station with its portable media. Then when you get back to the main data center, you can plug it into a T950 and reuse the RXT. Or it can be used to transfer data to a server, rack or otherwise.

"Spectra Logic started with a clean sheet of paper and has delivered a pretty innovative solution that combines the benefits of tape [removability, relative low-cost, long-term reliability] with disk [faster access, RAID protection]," said one judge. "And the library supports all major tape drives, tape media and network connectivity types."

SearchStorage.com and Storage magazine editors