The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) today confirmed that the industry has achieved the next plateau on the 90-millimeter (3.5-inch) Magneto-Optical (MO) technology roadmap. With first shipments of 2.3 GB MO products in November 2001, the industry has continued to deliver on OSTA's target to provide a backward compatible capacity migration path, critical to high performance archival storage applications.
The 2.3 GB technology, developed by Fujitsu Ltd. and Sony Corp., has made great strides in increasing capacity and significantly lowering cost, while continuing to provide the high reliability and full backward compatibility of previous 90-millimeter (3.5-inch) MO disk capacities. The 2.3 GB MO disks now retail at about $30 (manufacturers' suggested retail price), making them a cost-effective, reliable solution for consumers as well as system integrators.
In addition, 2.3 GB technology is supported by numerous manufacturers, including: Hitachi Maxell Ltd., Konica Corp., Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., Teijin Ltd., and RiTEK Corp.
Ninety-millimeter MO technology is well known in both medical (ultrasound) and telecommunications industries for its rugged disk construction, high performance and more than 50-year data archival life. The introduction of the 2.3 GB capacity point expands its market to include audio/video capture and playback, system backup and high reliability removable storage.
Full downward compatibility insures current MO users that smaller capacity MO disks will have full read and write capability, so data stored on them will still be available when they upgrade to the new capacity drive. Whether the application is desktop publishing, backup, or archiving medical or financial data, 3.5-inch MO disks are an ideal low-cost, high-reliability storage medium. More information about 2.3 GB technology can be found at www.MOstorage.com.
The 2.3 GB MO technology includes the following key features:
-- Magnetically induced Super Resolution (MSR)
-- Land and groove recording
-- 4.2 Gbit/in2 -- a 67% increase in the aerial bit density from the
1.3 GB technology
-- Data transfer rate of up to 8 MB/sec
-- 18 m/sec seek time (average)
-- 665 nm laser diode