The 8 mm backup format is a magnetic tape data storage format used in computer systems, pioneered by Exabyte Corporation. It is also known as Data8, often abbreviated to D8 and is written as D-Eight on some Sony branded media. Such systems can back up up to 60 GB of data depending on configuration. The cassettes have the same dimensions and construction as the cassettes used in 8 mm video format recorders and camcorders. Until the advent of AIT, Exabyte were the sole vendor of 8 mm format tape drives. The company was formed with the aim of taking the 8 mm video format and making it suitable for data storage. They did so by building a reliable mechanism and data format that used the common 8 mm helical scan video tape technology that was available then. Exabyte's first 8 mm tape drive was made available in 1987. This was followed up with their Mammoth tape drive in 1996, and the Mammoth-2 (M2) in 1999. Exabyte's drive mechanisms were frequently rebranded and integrated into UNIX systems. Generations NOTE: The AIT and VXA formats and some other less common formats also use 8 mm wide tape, but are completely incompatible. Compatibility between tapes and drives and native capacities (GB) Legend: RO - The tape drive can read this tape, but not write. (Read Only) Y - The tape drive can read and write this tape, but size is not known. Numbered entries indicate the native storage capacity (in GB) for this combination of tape and drive. Exabyte 8 mm These drives use metal particle (MP) tape. 1987—EXB-8200 Full-Height form factor 246 kB/s data transfer rate EXB-8200SX model features high-speed search EXB-8205: Up to 5.0 GB on one 112 m data cartridge (assuming 2:1 compression ratio) EXB-8205XL: Up to 7.0 GB on one 112 m data cartridge (assuming 2:1 compression ratio) 1990—EXB-8500 Full-Height form factor 500 kB/s data transfer rate EXB-8500c model features hardware data compression 1992—EXB-8505 Half-Height form factor 500 kB/s data transfer rate (uncompressed) / 1.0 MB/s data transfer rate (assuming a 2:1 compression ratio) Up to 10.0 GB on one 112 m data cartridge (assuming 2:1 compression ratio) 1994—EXB-8505XL Half-Height form factor 500 kB/s data transfer rate (uncompressed) / 1.0 MB/s data transfer rate (assuming a 2:1 compression ratio) Up to 14.0 GB on one 160 m XL data cartridge (assuming 2:1 compression ratio) 1995—EXB-8700 Tabletop (top-loading) form factor