HP has announced the expansion of the HP Business Protection portfolio with new tape backup solutions aimed at small-to-medium companies.

With no need for a SCSI adapter and more complicated SCSI setup, users can have the HP StorageWorks DAT 72 and DAT 40 USB tape drives out of the box and ready to use with their HP ProLiant servers in less than 60 seconds.

These solutions are the first to use the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface.

With the help of the HP One-Button Disaster Recovery feature, the drives allow the data recovery in case of disasters and the complete system configuration by pushing just one button.

Moreover, being sold together with HP StorageWorks Library and Tape Tools, the drives are extremely easy to install, hence small enterprises don't need a dedicated IT department to back-up their data.

The HP StorageWorks DAT 72 USB delivers a capacity of 72 gigabytes (GB) on a single data cartridge and a transfer rate of 23 GB/hour (assuming a 2:1 compression ratio). The DAT 72 USB is expected to be available July 4 starting at $749. The HP StorageWorks DAT 40 USB is a DDS-4 tape drive and shares the same features as the previous model, the only difference being the price, $599.