Dave Andrews
Pinnacle Micro (Irvine, CA) expects to release a new MO (magneto-optical) drive this month that's less expensive than magnetic hard drives. Also, it offers performance improvements over previous MO drives. Pinnacle says that with the new performance improvements, its 4.6-GB Apex drive will compete directly with magnetic hard drives as a primary storage medium. The Apex features removable storage cartridges and is also compatible with current 2- and 2.6-GB MO drives.
One improvement Pinnacle made is in data transfer speed. The company uses the same high-speed read-channel ICs (with some tweaking to supp
ort the optical format) found in magnetic hard drives to gain a respectable 6-MBps data transfer rate. The higher 4.6-GB data density is achieved by slightly increasing the recording area on the disk (without increasing the actual size of the 5-1/4-inch disk), using smaller-size bits to store data, and using smaller heads. The smaller heads also helped lower the seek time to between 15 and 17 milliseconds. And Pinnacle lowered the time required to write data to the drive by implementing direct overwrite instead of the two-pass write operation used in other MO drives.
The Apex may prove popular as a stand-alone storage device for power users as well as in optical jukeboxes. At a list price of $1695 (which includes a 4.6-GB cartridge), the drive offers a cost per megabyte of 37 cents compared to 58 cents per megabyte for a $2500 4.3-GB magnetic hard drive.
Ray Freeman, an analyst at storage consultant Freeman and Associates (Santa Barbara, CA), says the Apex drive will be "immensely attractive" if
it lives up to its advance billing. Says Freeman, "The Apex should stimulate additional demand for optical storage and generally give optical storage a shot in the arm."
New 4.6-GB Optical Drive Challenges Magnetic
