Automated optical mass storage systems with 3-beam magneto-optical disk drives

Abstract

An automated optical mass storage system (optical MSS) with high-speed magnetooptical (MO) disk drives has been developed. It features a high data transfer rate for writing with the use of the 130-mm ISO standard MO disk, and a high storage efficiency of disk cartridges. As the key device, a high-speed MO disk drive that provides a high-speed data writing capability of about 10 times that of conventional MO disk drives has been developed. The optical MSS provides a data transfer rate for reading and writing of 2.1 MB/s, a storage capacity of 250 GB to 1 TB, and an average cartridge handling time of 5 s. From performance simulations, the optical MSS is proven to be applicable to a low-traffic, random-access file that stores multimedia data and a high-speed direct access storage device (DASD) backup file.<>