In 1999 Ecrix (now merged with Exabyte and Tandberg Data) successfully developed the technique that allowed digital recording of logical data onto conventional video cassette tapes. This breakthrough made significantly higher bandwidth, faster access times, and greater data storage capacity possible in the already mature field of tape backup technology. One of the more significant new features of the VXA format was a divergence from the traditional method of recording data to tapes, used by DDS, DLT, and other competing formats, which use a linear recording method not unlike a conventional audio tape.

The original concept of storing data on a ferromagnetic medium spooled into reels is more than a hundred years old, but prior to Tandberg Data's breakthrough with VXA packet technology, the industry practices had barely changed in thirty years, whereby a continuous stream of data is written to the tape surface in long continuous lines. VXA packets are dotted diagonally across the tape surface in addressable packets, rather than continuous tracks, in such a way as to allow data to be more easily and accurately accessed, recorded, or recovered - even from damaged media.

The real genius behind Tandberg Data's VXA packet tapes, however, is that crucial word, "packet." Rather than a continuous stream of data, which allows for only rudimentary fault tolerance, a VXA tape's data is more similar to data received over a network connection, featuring 64 byte packets, which through the use of parity checks, makes it possible for significant physical data corruption to occur on the tape surface before any actual data loss occurs: If some bits are lost, the parity bits allow the missing data to be reconstructed and corrected on the fly.

The diagonal striping also makes the written area more tolerant of the tracking problems that would render a tracked tape unreadable, meaning deviation of the tape head at read/write time must be much more severe before it becomes too misaligned to be picked up. Because tracked tapes write several streams of parallel data horizontally along the length of the tape, it only takes a small shift up or down to put the tracking so far off that the head reads a stream above or below the one intended. Because VXA tapes are written as a series of diagonal stripes all the way along the tape, even if the tape shifts a little up or down in the course of reading or writing, it cannot be shifted so much that the head can miss the data stripe completely.

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