Although increasingly popular as a backup medium, there aren’t many removable hard disk solutions around.

Tandberg Data is looking to fill the gap with the RDX Quikstor, which can handle up to 120GB of data with Sata interface speeds.

The hardware comes in two parts – a chassis designed to fit a standard PC or server storage bay, plus removable cartridges, each containing a complete 3.5in Sata disk mechanism.

The starter kit we were sent came with a 40GB cartridge (£67 ex Vat if bought separately) with 80GB and 120GB cartridges also available at £100 and £160 ex Vat respectively. All the cables required are also included.

Installation is a screwdriver job, but easy if you know what you’re doing. There’s an external USB version (£190 ex VAT), but this won’t be quite as fast.

The cartridges are quite chunky, but they don’t look as robust as those used by the Storcase Data Express for Backup. However, according to Tandberg, they have been tested by dropping them from over a metre without sustaining any damage and are also dustproof. We were not able to check out these claims for ourselves.

Because it presents as an ordinary Sata hard disk, the RDX Quikstor can be used with the most recent operating systems, including most versions of Windows and Linux.

Windows, however, doesn’t expect Sata disks to be removable, so you do have to load up a small utility to enable the cartridges to be ejected and swapped. Using this, we were able to dismount and eject the cartridge without losing any data, either under software control (just like a CD-Rom) or by pressing the Eject button on the drive itself.

One of the big advantages of disk-based backup is that it’s a lot quicker than most tape solutions, especially those designed to compete in the small-business market. However, performance will depend on the host configuration and software used.

We tested using a Dell Poweredge server fitted with a 3GHz Intel Xeon processor, 1GB of Ram and a Sata 150 disk array running Windows Server 2003 R2. On this, the RDX Quikstor cartridge was mounted and assigned a drive letter like any other disk, and we were able to drag files to it or use the drive as a target from a backup application.

Almost any backup program can be used as most now let you take backups to hard disk, as well as tape. However, some won’t let backups span more than one disk cartridge and there are known issues with some products, making it worth checking the Tandberg Data website before buying.

A copy of Symantec Backup Exec was included as part of the bundle we tried. Using this, we recorded a transfer rate of just under 25Mbytes/sec while taking a full backup of the boot partition – about 10GB. We saw similar results when restoring the data again – results that compare well against tape-based alternatives and other removable disk products

The RDX also compares well on price. At just £160, it undercuts most SME tape drives by quite a margin, even when you factor in the purchase of additional cartridges. It’s also cheaper than the Storcase Express and the popular Iomega REV drive. The 35GB REV cartridges, which only contain disk platters, are marginally cheaper, but if you have a lot of data to protect, the RDX Quikstor is a better and more cost-effective solution.