About Instock, Inc

Storage Specialists in Storagetek, IBM, HP, Overland, Dell, ADIC, ATL/Quantum, Seagate, Dell, RAID, NAS, SAN, L700, L700E, L20, L40, 9840A, and 9940A

Yes we have heard the rumors that tape is dead...yep, tape is being replaced by Disk-to-Disk (D2D), Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL) and lest we forget remote mirroring...the rumors have been around for 20 years, but guess what - tape is still here.

We agree that D2D and VTL's are great for recovery, but have you ever tried to take your disks off site...there's the rub . Remote mirroring is great if you only have a few TB's, but anymore that and the cost or backup time makes this option unreasonable. Tape is still around because nothing beats a tape for offsite storage. If you are recovering from tape, that means your failover has failed, your RAID copies don't work, your VTL doesn't have your virtual tape available (BTW ask your VTL vendor how many VTL's have tape connected for offsite storage) and your remote lines are down. Trust us, if you are recovering from tape you will thank the heavens that the data exists regardless of the restore time.

Remember that 50% of all companies that experience a catastrophic data loss never reopen their doors and of the remaining 50%, half of those close their doors in less than two years. Offsite storage is your last hope for remaining in business.

Tape devices are complex electro-mechanical devices that seem to be an anomaly in today's data centers of blade servers and small disk form factors. To work with tape drives or libraries you have to have two qualities: first you have to have a passion for these complex electro-mechanical devices and second you have to be the best in repair and refurbishment.

We have the passion for tape drives and tape libraries. Honed over 10 years, our knowledge, expertise and inventory (10,000 sq ft warehouse and 50,000+ items in stock) are second to none. We understand the mechanical, analog, and digital aspects of everything from small external tape devices to autoloaders to libraries ranging from one drive to hundreds and from 15 media slots to thousands. We also understand the DLT, SDLT, LTO, AIT, 9940 and 9840 drives.

As for being the best; Instock has sales staff, technical staff and warehouse staff that know tape drives and tape libraries. Our sales staff has over 100 years of combined experience with computers and tape drives. Our technical staff works on tape every single day and can diagnose, troubleshoot and repair the electro-mechanical assemblies (stepper motors, picker assemblies, alignment, etc.), analog and digital circuitry. Our warehouse staff understand the sensitive nature of these devices and packs every device securely using bubble wrap for small items, foam packaging for small and medium size autoloaders and libraries (we never use newspaper or popcorn for packing). For large libraries we load onto pallets or have special shipping containers built for domestic and international shipments.

Take heart, tape is not dead and InStock is committed to tape in all of the shapes and sizes in today's data centers.

Storage Specialists in Storagetek, IBM, HP, Overland, Dell, ADIC, ATL/Quantum, Seagate, Dell, RAID, NAS, SAN, L700, L700E, L20, L40, 9840A, and 9940A