Digital Data Storage (DDS) is a computer data storage technology that is based upon the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) format that was developed during the 1980s.
DDS is primarily intended for use as off-line storage, especially for generating backup copies of working data.
Advancements in materials technology have allowed the length to be increased significantly in successive versions.
At one time, DDS competed against the Linear Tape-Open (LTO), Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT), VXA, and Travan formats.
However, AIT, Travan and VXA are no longer mainstream, and the capacity of LTO has far exceeded that of the most recent DDS standard, DDS-320.