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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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floptical (basically a floppy disk which uses an optical tracking mechanism to improve the positioning accuracy of an ordinary magnetic head, thereby allowing more tracks and greater density.) drives etc very well, they had poor read and write performance and bad reliability. Although these new drives seem to give better reliability, their speed seems to be just as poor. I'd give it a miss and buy one of these beauties.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Will never catch on. Period.
Ever notice how the MiniDisc format truely never caught on? LaserDisc? ZipDrives? CD-R and DVD+/-R have many more people buying equipment in those standards. These proprietary formats will always have a few adoptors, but they absolutely must improve (by an order of magnitude at the very least, DVD anyone?) on the current standards.
Now, if there were an MO drive/disc that could store 20GB on a double-sided disc, that would definitely draw some attention. And by attention I mean *consumer* attention. These are the folks that make the wheel of adopting turn.
http://www.fsckin.com/
It's about time someone did this. Floppy disks are cool but they store so little. The IBM PS/2s came with slightly larger 2.88meg floppy drives, but for some odd reason, they never caught on. Zip / superdrives were in vogue for a time, but alas the media cost a pretty penny and there was no assurance that the PC you wanted to put the media in had a Zip or Superdrive. Mini-disk would have been nice, the media you could get just about anywhere, but it never was a PC standard. I like caddies, even if it costs me a few times extra then plain media. Doesn't take up much more space, offers protection, generally is a good idea. Video tapes offer this, old style video pre-laser video disks offered this, floppys still offer this (though I admit, I'm still using that pile of AOL floppies they sent me years past). People are stupid and don't take care of their media. Jewel cases break, more compact sleaves based cases still are prone to scratching. That one piece of software is always going to be in that box somewhere and just when you need it, it's damaged on that one file you need.
Liberated women don't wear parachute bloomers!
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!"
Does anyone remember zip disks? Marvellous little things; decent storage capacity, decent access times, not too big size wise... Yet they failed. Badly. Why? First of all, the price: There is no justification for buying a 150 USD zip drive with 10 USD disks when you can get a 50 USD CD burner with 25 CDs for 10 USD. Also, there was this whole deal about Iomega being really anal with the zip drive specs ( Which in turn caused high prices which I mentioned before because there simply is NO competition. ) and the basic lack of Windows support for zip disks.
Let's hope this doesn't happen to these MO drives, that'd be a shame... That said, when the hell will we be rid of diskettes?
Hate me!
Here's a nice link for those who have no clue what you're talking about:
What IS the "Click of Death"?
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
You can comfortably put one in your pocket.
One of the biggest reasons why floppies are still so widely used is that you can easily put several (inside a carrying case, of course) in your pocket and not feel too encumbered when you walk around or sit down.
I can only surmise that the standardization on CD/DVD rewritables was a secret plot by the cargo pants industry to increase sales.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!