Found this interesting link from Anandtech,

I for one am looking forward to this being potentially good. I'm finding tape drives, as their capacity is increasing, are becoming more fussy..less reliable. DAT 12/24's I found great, but starting with 20/40's...36/72's...I've found them often rejecting tapes, or needed replacement of drives.

I've found AIT tape drives to be pretty good (although I now think I know where Sony is dumping all their leftover BETA tapes...LOL)

But these look to be promising!

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1382608,00.asp

"Iomega Corp. has announced that its first products using RRD technology will challenge tape drives for backup applications beginning in 2004.

On Thursday, Iomega said its first Removable Rigid Disk (RRD) drives will be branded as the Iomega REV and will feature 35GB of native storage capacity, or 90GB compressed. The drives will cost less than $400 when they launch in March 2004, the company said, and cartridges will be priced at about $49 apiece. The final pricing of both, however, will be announced at launch."

More on the link...