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Magneto-Optical Drives Reviewed
MikShapi writes "Tom's Hardware is running an informative article about Fujitsu's new Magneto-Optical drives and the MO technology in general. Is the caddy finally back to put an end to scratched Disks?"
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Is the caddy finally back to put an end to scratched Disks?
I always thought that removable media (cd's, dvd's) with no protective covering was the most idiotic invention of our time. I hope MO or something similar makes a comeback, but it always seems like whatever is cheaper wins. Ah, who cares about technical superiority anyway, right?
The more I know, the more I know I don't know.
Even 5gb is not really enough for me to back up my HD (or DV footage) efficiently - but its the best compromise so far. Ive had enough of obsolete data-formats in the past - I have film on "Digital-8" format that is going to be expensive to find a camera to read it.. Stick t the big formats - Mini-DV, CD-R, DVD-R, you will always be able to find a reader for these. Handy if you need to access your data on someone elses system too, without lugging a drive around. Mind you, I would like to see a 10gb version of DVD-R..
By the way I was trying to back up loads of 1 hour DV films onto DVD - any thoughts on the most efficient process, the best MPEG2 encoder, etc?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I know that up to a couple of years ago, all graphics designers used Zip drives and media almost exclusively. CD-recorders might be cheaper now but they were not this cheap 5 years ago, and you could just put a zip disk in a padded envelope with some certainty it would survive the post. Iomega made A LOT of money with zips, I'm sure.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
If you looked outside your borders you might find cases where those formats "caught on".
Laserdisc and MiniDisc where huge in Japan.
The entire graphic design industry seemed to love the Zip drives. Zip was great because it needed little attention and one could drag files without thinking. To do that with CD-R and writeable DVDs requires a bad hack to be installed into the OS and the disc to be specially re-formatted.
They also had a huge problem with reliability issues known as COD (click of death) where the drive would make click click click noises and render the disks permanantly unreadable. I think that turned a lot of people away from Zip disks.
Um... Your definition of "catch on" and mine must be different. I don't think something needs to be in every single PC in order to have caught on.
A product that has become indispensible and widely owned within its intended niche has "caught on" and MO certainly did that. Among digital archivists and many businesses with serious data integrity needs, MO has been the absolute standard for many years now. MO drives are in the wild all over the place and the disks (both 3.5" and 5.25", all generally backward compatible) are easy to order and available from multiple sources-- just not at retail, because naturally that's not the target market. But then try to get an 8mm data cartridge at retail. Or a DDS-4 cartridge.
It's not a consumer technology, and never was intended to be, as is evidenced by cost. It's too robust to be a consumer technology. For the average household, there's no need for a $100 disk with glass substrate and a rigid part-aluminum casing, as many of our MO disks have.
The same goes for MiniDisc... It's everywhere in some circles. In field research, I know a lot of people who use them for interviewing because they're convenient, easy to (digitally) label, CD-quality, and it's easy to shuffle tracks around, etc. A lot of studio guys also use it in cocert with (or in some cases even instead of!) DAT for audio recordings. And the bootleg crowd absolutely loves MiniDisc as well.
And MiniDisc CAN be bought at your local store. At least where I live... Just walk into a department store and check the electronics section... A few portable CD players and a few MiniDisc players. How is that a market failure?
Again, I think the only reason there isn't more consumer adoption is cost. A portable CD player costs the same as pizza delivery. A minidisc player costs the average guy half his paycheck.
In any case, I think it's very simplistic to suggest that if a technology doesn't become as widespread as TV, it's been a market failure... although technologies that were once successful in their niche can eventually fade if a competitor comes along. I think that's what's happening to MO now, largely thanks to DVD-RAM, which represents a kind of compromise between the high cost of MO and the cheaper but less reliable consumer optical formats. I know that we have switched to (and I have bought for myself) 9.6GB DVD-RAM units because the disks are still protected and random-access, but are considerably less expensive and require less physical storage space than 5.25" MO.
But the same thing still holds true... DVD-RAM is becoming more and more widely deployed as an archive medium, and meanwhile generally any DVD-R/RW story on Slashdot is 25% full of posts making fun of DVD-RAM as though it were already a dead technology, just because people don't know any friends who have one in their gaming box.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW