digital tape format (DTF)
The Digital Tape Format (DTF) is a 1/2-inch tape storage technology developed by Sony, which originated from the professional video technology, the Betacam technology.
Digital Tape Format (DTF) comes in two formats: DFT-1, dating back to 1995, with 60 gigabytes( GB) of storage, and DFT-2, with the extreme storage of 200 GB of uncompressed data that can be transferred at a data rate of 24 MB/s. Using a special compression chip with Advanced Data LinkController( ADLC), average compression ratios of 2.6:1 are achieved. This means that up to 520 GB of compressed data can be stored on a 1/2-inch cartridge. The average seek time is about 11 s. The DTF series is to be expanded by DTF-4 with a storage capacity of 400 GB.
DTF uses the helical-scan method of recording, which employs eight rotating magnetic heads to increase the data transfer rate.
Two different cartridge formats are available for DFT drives: the L cartridge and the smaller S cartridge with 60 GB of storage space. Both cartridge types contain a memory chip for tape information that is read and written by the drive or robotics without contact.
The DTF drives can be equipped with Ethernet interface for external management and tape libraries. This interface is used for communication with the library electronics. Tape libraries with several terabytes( TB) of storage capacity can be built using an autoloader.