HomeMacityBusiness Office and ProfessionalsTandberg RDX QuikStor is a backup or storage solution, with mechanical disks or SSDs located on removable drives, for those with great security needs or even for those who need an offline archive to be consulted only when needed.
Raise your hand
On a slightly vintage note, raise your hand if you remember the old (very old to tell the truth, we are talking about the mid-nineties) removable drives of SyQuest and, later, of Iomega.
Of course, other years and other capacities, then there was talk of less than 44 MB for SyQuest and 100 MB for Iomega, values practically irrelevant today but important then, provided that the most popular floppy disks carried up to 1.4 MB of data: for anyway still present on Amazon, for those who maybe have working drives (or want to buy one).
With the advancement of technology, the lowering of CD or DVD burning costs and the average cost per GB of hard drives, the solutions of SyQuest and Iomega gave way (Iomega was bought by Lenovo), and these names remain today fixed only in the memories of the most experienced users.
The Tandberg RDX QuikStor solution is perhaps inspired by that removable cartridge project, even if here it is a modern and much more capable (and faster) product and designed for a very different use.
Business only
Whether it's a business product, you understand from the essential box, where the actual drive and a mixed USB-B / USB-A (double) cable for connection are found.
In the box there is no power supply, and in fact the unit tested here in the editorial office works very well, however, connecting both USB-A sockets to the Mac (thus consuming two connectors instead of the classic single), wanting a socket for an external power supply is present, but you probably need to buy it separately.
The unit is certainly not mobile, but it comes made of metal, with a clearly visible external rubber protection, which offers a look that seems to withstand a few drops (but we have not done specific tests).
On the front it has practically only a large input port for the cartridges, while in the back there is the USB connector, the one for the power supply and a small fan for cooling.
The cartridges are made of plastic with the SATA connector on the back, have a writable label on the front (where to put words on the contents) and have individual plastic containers.
How does it work
The Tandberg RDX QuikStor works exactly with an external disk: you connect it and insert the cassette (even with the computer on) and after a few seconds this is visible on the desktop, like any USB drive with SATA disks.
You can proceed with the most congenial formatting, based on the use for which we designed it: the cassettes are both with rotating disks (therefore as common Hard Disks) and with solid state drives (therefore as SSD drives).
Once you have finished using the cartridge, on Mac putting it in the trash is equivalent to ejecting it, with consequent physical ejection of the cartridge itself, which comes out a few millimeters to be extracted.
For the rest, the cartridges replace disks, with a decrease in peak speed probably due to the ejection system, which with one more connector than a common disk or SSD complicates the communication between the computer and the volume.
However, we want to underline that from the point of view of this product, speed is not at all important, what counts here is above all the robustness and reliability of the cartridges over time. Being a backup-only drive, taking 15 or 20 minutes to archive one or more folders is not relevant to the economic evaluation. Basically, a drive is faster but it doesn't do the same thing.
In a speed test with SSD drives, the peak value is certainly not high, but is reported to the specificity of the product
I because of the Tandberg RDX QuikStor solution
The tests we did in the editorial office on this Tandberg RDX QuikStor, using alternatively both the mechanical cartridge and the solid state one, we only operated in pure storage.
We especially focused on the reasons for such a particular choice, in a world where the cost per GB is now very low both in local and cloud storage: the point in the opinion of the writer lies in the fact of wanting or not wanting keep an archive online, that is, always available, and this is a question that only those who have an archive of considerable size and with high-value files can understand.
For some specific jobs, archiving the work defined as “finished” or concluded may make more sense in a cabinet rather than in a server or NAS, precisely because this work is not directly accessible by users.
The reasons can be different, both from a security point of view (any malware shouldn't to attach documents that are disconnected from the computer) and from the practical one, for example for those who do very large continuous and progressive jobs, it can be an advantage to have an archive where to fish data only when needed .
Or the idea of the cartridges can be valid for finishing a job and delivering a physical copy to the customer, containing several TB of data, so that the responsibility for archiving does not lie with those who did the work but, precisely, with the customer.
Ultimately such a drive can be convenient for an alternate backup, changing cassettes every day, so that the data is copied differently on different disks, thus being able to recover files in a more exact and less risky way: Time Machine, for example. example, it recognizes a backup of this type and intelligently proceeds to do so, even if Time Machine is probably not the best choice, better opt for more professional solutions like Get Backup 3.
If once the removable drives of SyQuest or Iomega were very convenient for transporting data between logistically distant users, today we no longer see this utility, where a cloud is much more convenient.
Tandberg proposes the RDX QuikStor model under test, but has even more interesting solutions on the list, to be put in Rack
Considerations
Tandberg RDX QuikStor is certainly a niche storage and backup solution, but for this very reason (very) useful in certain situations.
Where speed is not the strong point, it is the alternative form of use, which can ultimately cost more than a simple disk more on a server, but is much more interesting where there are real needs. Consumer users can safely look elsewhere, while for those with high storage volumes this is an expensive solution, but one that may have its specific utility.
Pro :
• Excellent for specific needs • Does not require power supply
Cons:
• More expensive than online solutions • Speed is reduced • Requires two USB ports
Price:
• Tandberg RDX QuikStor unit (8782-RDX) € 192.00
• 500GB HDD cartridge (8541-RDX) € 110.00 • 1.0TB HDD cartridge (8541-RDX) € 175.00 • 2TB HDD cartridge (8731-RDX) € 308.00 • 4TB HDD cartridge (8824-RDX) 418 € .00 • 5TB HDD cartridge (8862-RDX) € 598.00 • 500GB SSD cartridge (8665-RDX) € 200.00 • 1TB SSD cartridge (8877-RDX) € 354.00 • 2TB SSD cartridge (8878-RDX ) € 790.00 • 4TB SSD cartridge (8886-RDX) € 1,380.00 • 8TB SSD cartridge (8887-RDX) € 2,304.00
Tandberg RDX QuikStor is available in the stores suggested by the parent company's website or you can find it more conveniently also at Amazon.it both for the base unit, and for the mechanical or solid-state cartridges.
