Despite its excellent documentation, the Viper 200's performance on our tests was lackluster, particularly in backup speed. The device trailed the HP Ultrium 230e, our other Ultrium 1 contender, by more than 9 minutes in backup time, though its restore time was just over a minute faster than that of the 230e.

Like the 230e, the Viper 200 offers 100GB of native media capacity and 200GB compressed. The LED design is another shortcoming, one shared to a lesser degree by several products in this roundup. These products attempt to signal ten or more drive status conditions using just three or four green LEDs; even with documentation, it's a challenge to distinguish the various condition signals. This is surprising for a nearly $5,000 device, given that some $200 electric shavers now come equipped with LCDs. And the Viper 200 is exceptionally challenging in this regard, because its LEDs are not even labeled.

Ironically, the Viper 200 is the only product that includes detailed information about necessary configuration steps for Digital Unix, IBM AIX, SCO OpenServer, and Linux. Performance aside, if you seek a drive that provides support and information for non-Microsoft platforms, this product is worth a closer look.