A full compliment of drivers for most popular variants of UNIX are also available for the Aerial 8mm.

With an extensive reliability rating of up to 250,000 hours, the Aerial 8mm is assured to provide years of use as data storage requirements continue to grow. Dynamic Head Cleaning provides automatic preventative maintenance by cleaning the read/write heads at every tape load/unload cycle. Embedded diagnostics provide for quick and simple troubleshooting and error recovery.

The Aerial 8mm is the first high performance upgrade path for the extensive installed base of loyal 8mm users. All 8200, 8500, 8500c Exabyte-based media can be read by the Aerial 8mm.

The Aerial 8mm streaming tape drive takes tape performance to a new level. Its high capacity, fast transfer rate and rapid search speed provide the performance required to meet growing data storage needs.

The Aerial 8mm features a data capacity of 40GB per cartridge (with 2:1 data compression) and is capable of a data transfer rate up to 20MB/second.

High performance data compression using the Improved Data Recording Capability algorithm (IDRC) doubles data throughput and cartridge capacity. IDRC, coupled with a PerifiTech SCSI Enhancement Kit, optimizes the server's SCSI data throughput, allowing the tape drive to run at speeds that reach the system's full transfer rate potential. The result is optimal performance designed for today's demanding multimedia and digital video applications, near-line storage requirements, and hierarchical storage management systems.

Under normal operating conditions, when used in conjunction with Computer Associate's industry-leading tape operating software, ARCserveIT, the Aerial 8mm will back-up commercial data on a Novell NetWare 3.12 or 4.X server in excess of 160MB per minute or 9.5GB per hour. Restore speeds are equally impressive at over 140MB per minute. Under Windows NT or IBM OS/2, the Aerial 8mm will backup and restore commercial data at over 200 MB per minute.