End of RDX : Tandberg Data’s Exit and What It Means

Let me take you back to the days when DDS/DAT tapes ruled the backup scene. A DDS-90 tape used to cost just 2 dollars - the cheapest tape I ever sold in my life. It also turned out to be one of the most successful backup technologies ever. Sony and HP had struck gold with DDS, and the aspiration of every other vendor was to take a piece of that business. You had 8mm, VXA, SLR/MLR… every tape maker was scrambling for share. And then came RDX which wasn’t even a tape but a disk , dressed up as a tape.

Start of RDX with ProStor Systems

ProStor Systems launched RDX in 2004. The idea was simple: stick a 2.5" hard drive inside a shock-protected tape like enclosure that could dock into, well, a Dock. Under the hood it was just plain old SATA hard drives, but packaged for easy handling, removability, and hot-swap. They pitched ruggedness (drop-resistant) and a 30-year archival life, everything at par with tapes. Later, SSD versions showed up too which had SSD inside instead of hard drive.

The dock itself was nothing fancy- just a SATA-to-USB converter with a little motor to eject the cartridge when you press the button , and it was sold dirt cheap ( compared to a tape drive) . The cartridges, on the other hand, were pricey, because each one was literally a hard drive plus casing. The bet was on usability: unlike tape, you could drag-and-drop files to it (tapes promised that too with LTFS, which is another story for another time ). You got universal file formats, simple handling, and much better speeds.

Economies of RDX were flipped compared to tape. With tape, you spent more for the drive, then enjoyed cheap media. With RDX, it was the opposite - you bought a cheap dock (your “drive”) and then kept paying for expensive cartridges. That math worked if you only needed 10–15 units. But once you scaled to 30, 40, 50 cartridges, LTO quickly won, because every extra RDX you bought stacked up your costs. So RDX was great for SMBs who didnt need many tapes.

Tandberg Acquires RDX Technology

Somewhere around 2011, Tandberg Data acquired the RDX business from ProStor. Tandberg was already a known player in the game - they had been manufacturing SLR/MLR tapes for companies like Imation, alongside their own hardware. They were also an early RDX partner, so they had seen the potential firsthand. The acquisition worked well for them . They expanded RDX line to support upto 5TB cartridges( this was the biggest 2.5” hdd capacity) , SSD variants, and even Secure RDX models. They got a solid foothold in the backup market.

All the major server vendors supported RDX too . Dell had the RD1000, HP offered RDX removable media, IBM branded it as Removable Disk Exchange, and Quantum sold GoVault—all of them were essentially RDX under different names. You could buy a Dell RD1000 and still pop in a Quantum GoVault cartridge ( It was an RDX cartridge in an RDX dock , it didnt care about what you called it ) . RDX was fast becoming the de facto standard for removable disk backup. (Actually, There was no other competing technology unless you count a plain old USB hard drive as “removable backup.”)

Tandberg’s Troubled Chapter and Exit from RDX

But Tandberg itself was not a very stable company. One bankruptcy and two acquisitions later -first by Overland (at least they were in the backup business) and then by Sphere 3D (which went from virtualization to selling Bitcoins) it was business as usual until 2024.

2024 brought two major announcements. First, Tandberg said they were exiting the LTO business to focus solely on RDX. That made sense: why fight the bigger LTO giants when you had a monopoly on RDX ? Better put all your energy into the one thing that you fully owned.

And then came the second announcement - the shocker. They weren’t just quitting LTO, they were quitting everything . And since Tandberg was the owner of RDX, end of tandberg equaled end of RDX

No Tandberg, No RDX – End-of-Life for RDX Products

Since Tandberg owned the RDX technology, their collapse meant nobody else could get any more RDX. HPE announced their RDX products were going EOL . They were the only ones still actively pushing RDX besides Tandberg in 2025. Quantum had given up long ago, and so did Dell .

IBM put out a similar notice, advising customers to find an “alternative archival solution.” (As if such a thing actually exists, the only OTHER solution is LTO)

Future : LTO as alternative for now , maybe another low tech successor in making

With RDX gone, the only real alternative left on the table is LTO. Ironically, Overland-Tandberg had once tried to walk away from LTO which now is the last mainstream removable storage technology still standing.

I see a real opening here for players like Symply, MagStor, and mLogic who offer LTO drives with unconventional interfaces like Thunderbolt and Ethernet, bridging SAS. For someone moving from USB-based RDX, jumping to a Thunderbolt LTO is far more easiers than figuring the SAS cabling and HBAs.

At the same time, I think that that someone will try to build an RDX alternative. It’s not rocket science: take a SATA drive, wrap it in a shock-proof casing - that’s your cartridge. Add a USB-to-SATA bridge, another casing, and a small motor for load/unload and that’s your dock. Okay, it’s not that easy, but it’s not impossible either. Compared to designing an LTO drive (or even a hard disk), it’s a million times simpler. You’re piggybacking on existing tech, and with relatively little effort, the payoff could be big. Somebody will take a shot at it.

So that’s the story of how RDX was blown apart (couldn’t resist the pun it really was explosive tech). Born as a tape killer, it lived a solid life in the hands of startups and server giants, only to be taken down not by innovation but by corporate chaos.

Now for the plug I’m not ashamed of (this is what pays the bills): at PNP, we’ve been living and breathing storage for decades. From LTO tapes to drives with Thunderbolt/Ethernet bridges, and even helping customers transition away from dead-end formats like RDX (with a huge inventory of RDX cartridges and docks still on hand if you can’t move away immediately) , we’ve got the products, the expertise, and the experience to make the shift painless.