Exabyte Corp. has announced the release of the Magnum 1X7 LTO Autoloader, a 2U, rack-mountable, automated backup and restore system for less that US$5,000.

The new Magnum 1X7 product features a single LTO (linear tape open) drive and room for seven tape cartridges. It provides as much as 187GB per hour data transfer speed and 1.4TB of native storage capacity.

"We believe this is a very important product because it brings the speed and capacity of LTO to a price point that is more affordable to a large number of customers," said Tom Ward, president and CEO of Exabyte.

Ward said the new product, while aiming for a new low price point for LTO drive technology, also includes some high-end features, such as a barcode reader to track tape cartridges and an Ethernet port to allow remote management.

Exabyte has been on a cost-cutting campaign of late. In October, for instance, the company introduced the VXA Packet X Tapes, which reduced the price of tape cartridges to better compete with and replace DDS tape.