Released in 2006, the Sun Storage Tek T10000 tape cartridge can hold up to 500 GB of data (native/uncompressed) and transfer data at a rate of 120 MB/s. It is mainly for use with mainframes but can also be implemented in other environments. This is better than almost all hard drives and is also better than LTO 3 drives’ transfer speed (80 MB/s). A complementary feature is the 256-megabyte buffer designed to hold data before it is written to tape. The buffer can hold streaming data during the occasional back-hitch, thus eliminating performance hits. The support for variable transfer rates allows the drive to handle two common situations. It slows to the lower transfer rate if the host rsquo;s ability to stream data drops below 50 megabytes per second. It speeds up to the higher rate as needed when the host’s ability to stream data improves to greater than 50 megabytes per second. The T10000 tape drive improves data integrity by combining a sophisticated dual error correction code (ECC) and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to provide one of the highest levels of error detection and correction available. The dual ECC, in conjunction with the spreading out of the data over a large area, creates a significant improvement over other ECC systems.