Magneto-optical drive

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A Magneto-optical disc and the numerous rectangles on its surface.

A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data
upon a magneto-optical disc. Both 130 mm (5.25 in) and 90 mm (3.5 in) form factors exist.
The technology was introduced commercially in 1985[1]. Although optical, they appear as
hard disk drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be
formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). Magneto optical drives are common in some countries
such as Japan but have fallen into disuse in other countries like the United States.

Contents
[hide]

 1 Technical aspects
 2 Vendors
 3 Floptical drives
 4 Recent progress
 5 See also
 6 External links
 7 References

[edit] Technical aspects

A 130 mm 2.6GB Magneto optical disc.

A 90 mm 640MB Magneto-optical disc.

A 230 MB Fujitsu 90 mm magneto-optical disc.

Initially the drives were 130 mm and had the size of full-height 130 mm hard-drives (like in
IBM PC XT). 130 mm media looks similar to a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style caddy,
while 90 mm media is about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disk, but twice the
thickness. The cases provide dust resistance, and the drives themselves have slots constructed
in such a way that they always appear to be closed.

The disc consists of a ferromagnetic material sealed beneath a plastic coating. There is never
any physical contact during reading or recording. During reading, a laser projects a beam on
the disk and according to the magnetic state of the surface, the reflected light varies due to the
Magneto-optic Kerr effect. During recording, the laser power is increased so it can heat the
material up to the Curie point in a single spot. This allows an electromagnet positioned on the
opposite side of the disc to change the local magnetic polarization, and the polarization is
retained when temperature drops.

Each write cycle requires both a pass for the laser to erase the surface, and another pass for
the magnet to write the information, and as a result it takes twice as long to write data as it
does to read it. In 1996, a Direct Overwrite technology was introduced for 90 mm discs, to
avoid the initial erase pass when writing. This requires special media.
Magneto-optical drives by default check information after writing it to the disc, and are able
to immediately report any problems to the operating system. This means that writing can
actually take three times longer than reading, but it makes the media extremely reliable,
unlike the CD-R or DVD-R technologies upon which data is written to media without any
concurrent data integrity checking. Using a magneto-optical disc is a lot more like using a
diskette drive than using a CD-RW.

Progress in magneto-optical technology received a boost in the spring of 1997 with the
launch of Plasmon’s DW260 drive. This used Light Intensity Modulated Direct OverWrite
technology to achieve an increased level of performance over previous magneto-optical
drives.

The 130mm drives were available in capacities from 650MB to 9.2GB. However, this was
split in halves per the sides of the disk. The 2.6GB disks, for example, had a formatted
capacity of 1.2GB per side. The 130mm drives were always SCSI. The 90mm discs had their
entire capacity on one side with no capability to flip them over. The 90mm drives were
available in SCSI, IDE, and USB formats. Capacities ranged from 128MB to 2.3GB.

While they were never particularly popular with consumers (the main consumer marketing
being for the 90mm drives), the 130mm drives had some lasting service in corporate storage
and retrieval. Optical libraries, such as the Hewlett Packard 40XT, were created to automate
loading and storing of the disks. A self contained unit holding 16 or more disks and
connected by SCSI to a host computer, the library required specialized archival software to
store indexes of data and select disks. Popular uses were for legal document storage and
medical imaging, where high reliability, long life, and (for the time) high storage capacity
were required. The optical libraries could also manually be used on a Windows 2000/XP
machine by selecting and ejecting discs under the Computer Management icon's Removable
Storage Service, but this was cumbersome in practice.

[edit] Vendors
The NeXT computer was the first to offer this technology, but Canon eventually provided it
to other customers.

Sony MiniDiscs are magneto-optical, and Sony produces many other formats of magneto-
optical media.

Pinnaclemicro was a major manufacturer of magneto optical drives. 3.5" drives were 128MB
and 230MB. 5.25" drives produced were 650MB and 1.3GB (Sierra), 2.6GB (Vertex) and
4.6GB (Apex). The Vertex and Apex were non-ISO standard drives and used a proprietary
media. Pinnaclemicro has ceased production of these products.

Maxoptix is a major manufacturer of 130 mm or 5.25″ magneto optical drives. Current model
is T7-9100 drive which has a maximum capacity of 9.1GB and is downward read and write
compatible with 5.2GB, 4.8GB, 4.1GB, 2.6GB, and 2.3GB MO disks, and read compatible
with 1.3GB, 1.2GB, 650MB, and 600MB magneto-optical disks. Popular older models of
5.25″ Maxoptix MO drives are the T6 Star, T6-5200 and T5-2600 MO drives. See [1] for
more details.
Fujitsu was a major manufacturer of 90 mm magneto-optical drives, exceeding 2 GB in
capacity, but they have discontinued production and sale of this product category.

PDO Konica Minolta is now the only manufacturer of 90 mm 3.5" magneto-optical drives.
They have a 3.5" 1.3GB USB external pocket drive available for sale in the United States and
Europe. Source this drive in the United States at [2], and in Europe at [3].

[edit] Floptical drives

Magneto-optical drives should not be confused with Floptical drives, which likewise combine
ferromagnetic and optical technologies, albeit in a different manner. Flopticals are 21
megabyte 90 mm magnetic diskettes using optical tracks to increase the tracking precision of
the magnetic head; from the usual 135 tracks per inch to 15,000 tracks per inch. No laser or
heating was involved; a simple infrared LED was used to follow the optical tracks, while a
magnetic head touched the recording surface. The drives could also read and write traditional
90 mm diskettes, although not the 2.88 megabyte variety. Flopticals were manufactured by
Insite Peripherals, a company founded by Jim Burke.

[edit] Recent progress

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2004, Sony revealed a 1 gigabyte capacity
MiniDisc known as "Hi-MD." This sixfold increase in capacity is performed using a
magneto-optical trick. To record a standard MiniDisc the writer uses an infrared laser to heat
a spot of ferromagnetic material on the disc to above its Curie point, then it is magnetised by
a recording head as it cools. In contrast a high capacity MiniDisc uses tracks that are one
sixth of those used in standard MiniDiscs. By employing three magnetic layers, when a high
capacity MiniDisc is read, the track expands to readable size. Specifically the three layers are,
from read-face to print-face: a displacement layer, a switching layer, and a memory layer.
When it isn't being read, the magnetic field in the memory layer is the same as those in the
displacement and switching layers. When a laser shines on the track, the switching layer,
which has a lower Curie point than the other layers, demagnetises. It decouples from the
displacement layer, whose "magnetic fence" around the track weakens, temporarily causing
the track to swell to a readable size. Hi-MD recorders can also double the capacity of regular
minidiscs with special formatting that renders the disc unreadable (or writable) by non-Hi-
MD minidisc recorders.

As with all removable storage media, the advent of cheap CD/DVD drives and flash memory
has made them largely redundant. Magneto-optical disks in particular were expensive when
new, and while highly reliable, the slow writing time also was a negative factor.

The magneto-optical (MO) drive is a popular way to back up files on a personal computer. As
the term implies, an MO device employs both magnetic and optical technologies to obtain
ultra-high data density. A typical MO cartridge is slightly larger than a conventional 3.5-inch
magnetic diskette, and looks similar. But while the older type of magnetic diskette can store
1.44 megabytes (MB) of data, an MO diskette can store many times that amount, ranging
from 100 MB up to several gigabytes (GB).
magneto-optical drive

An MO system achieves its high data density by using a laser and a magnetic read/write head
in combination. Both the laser and the magnet are used to write data onto the diskette. The
laser heats up the diskette surface so it can be easily magnetized, and also to allow the region
of magnetization to be precisely located and confined. A less intense laser is used to read data
from the diskette. Data can be erased and/or overwritten an unlimited number of times, as
with a conventional3.5-inch diskette.

Examples of magneto-optical drives are the Fujitsu DynaMO, a 230 MB drive used in the
PowerPC Apple Powerbook, a note book computer, and the Pinnacle Micro Vertex, a 2.6 GB
drive.

The chief assets of MO drives include convenience, modest cost, reliability, and (for some
models)widespread availability approaching industry standardization.The chief limitation of
MO drives is that they are slower than hard disk drives, although they are usually faster than
conventional 3.5-inch diskette drives.