What is AIT?
AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) is a new tape technology developed by Sony. It incorporates a new recording format, ALDC compression, MIC (Memory In Cassette) capabilities. and the exclusive use of AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) media.

What is SDX?
SDX is the series name of the media and hardware associated with the AIT format incorporated in a 3.5-inch form factor.

Is AIT compatible with other 8mm data cartridges?
The AIT format is a future-oriented format that sets new performance and capacity standards for utilizing high-density recording. Its design is optimized for recording AME media and will not accomodate older media types.

Why a new format?
With the ever increasing need for higher capacity. reliability and performance, Sony recognized the importance of developing a format that met these requirements rather than making compromises to achieve compatibility with the past.

What happens if I mistakenly insert an 8mm cartridge
other than AIT into the drive?
The AIT drive will eject the cartridge as unsupported media. If you mistakenly put the AIT into another drive, other 8mm mechanisms will accept the AIT cassette, but it is permanently write-protected. The recorded data is never damaged.

For what applications is the AIT suited?
In addition to conventional unattended backup, AIT is also suited to a wide range of applications, such as image/multimedia, storage and retrieval, real-time data acquisition, transportable storage, as well as storage management applications.

What is AME?
AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) is the tape formulation used by AIT. Key characteristics include 100% pure cobalt magnetic layer, dual magnetic layer design, the absence of binder material to prevent tape head contamination, and DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) protective coating for extreme durability.

About how long is the media life?
Based on Sony's media life experiments, it is estimated to be 30 years, similar to other current tape media.

Does AIT require cleaning?
The AIT Driveconstantly monitors head output to check for possible contamination and will then invoke the built-in Active Head Cleaner. Under some conditions, a cleaning cartridge may be required and the drive will indicate this to the user and the application.