Jason Schaffer, senior director of storage marketing at Sun, claimed that customers deploying the device could "cut data centre space requirements in half".
The device provides second generation of media reuse and backward read/write compatibility, allowing customers that have standardised on Sun's StorageTek T10000 media family to gain double capacity on existing cartridges.
The Sun StorageTek T10000B Fibre Channel Tape Drive starts at US$37,000 and will be available this month.