About Optical
Magneto-Optical Media
Magneto-optical media was introduced in the late 1980’s, with the goal of providing a data storage medium that can be used to store electronic records for a long period of time, and that data would be written to the medium using a method that would prevent the ability to delete or alter records, either accidentally or intentionally.
As magneto-optical technology proved to be a safe and reliable write-once read-many storage medium, a number of government and regulatory agencies began requiring corporations to store electronic information such as accounting records, personnel records, medical records, insurance policies, etc, on “WORM” media to preserve and guarantee its authenticity, leading to what is known today as “regulatory compliance”.
The first generation of magneto-optical media had a capacity of 650MB, with subsequent generations having capacities of 1.3GB, 2.6GB, 5.2GB, and finally 9.1GB, at which point the technology was announced end-of-life.
Automate libraries from manufacturers such as Plasmon, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, IBM, and MaxOptix were developed so that up to hundreds of magneto-optical disks can be stored in a single-device, and serve as an extension to the file system of a Windows or UNIX server. An entry-level optical library can store as few as 16 optical disks, while an enterprise-level library from Plasmon can hold up to 638 disks.
Ultra-Density Optical Media
Ultra-Density Optical (UDO) media was introduced in 2004, as the next logical media type to follow magneto-optical, with significant performance improvements and capacity increases, at a lower total cost of ownership over magneto-optical technology.
Unlike magneto-optical, that used a combination of magnetic and optical for its recording technology, UDO optical is purely an optical media, based on 100% laser recording, and physically alters the composition of the media such that data cannot be deleted or altered under any circumstances, making it the most secure storage medium ever developed.
The first generation of UDO media had a capacity of 30GB per platter, while the second generation, released in 2007, had a capacity of 60GB. The planned roadmap for UDO is a third generation that will provide 120GB, and possibly a fourth generation that will hold 240GB on a single UDO platter.
With much higher capacities than magneto-optical libraries, an entry-level UDO library with 24 disks has a capacity of 1.4TB, while an enterprise-level library with 638 disks has a capacity of 38TB, thus providing a massive amount of write-once storage for applications that require regulatory compliance.
Blu-ray Disk
Blu-ray disk was developed primarily for use in the entertainment industry to deliver movies and other forms of entertainment to the home user on a transportable, universally readable storage medium.
As the industry experienced with DVD, the low cost and high capacity offered by Blu-ray media made it a logical choice for data storage applications for price-sensitive customers who required the longevity and security of a UDO archive, but did not have the available budget, as a UDO storage device and UDO media requires a higher entry cost over Blu-ray technology.
Unlike double-sided magneto-optical and UDO optical media, Blu-ray media is single-sided, thereby simplifying the way an automated Blu-ray library handles the disks. Additionally, a Blu-ray disk can be transported and read on any desktop computer, laptop, or server equipped with a Blu-ray drive, whereas a UDO disk requires an expensive UDO drive or library to read the media.
The first generation of Blu-ray media had a capacity of 25GB per disk, while the second generation had a capacity of 50GB. The planned roadmap for Blu-ray is a third generation that will provide 100GB, and a fourth generation that will hold 200GB on a single-sided disk.
With much higher capacities than DVD libraries, an entry-level Blu-ray library with 45 disks has a capacity of 2.25TB, while an enterprise-level library with 660 disks has a capacity of 33TB, thus providing a safe, secure archive on a universally readable media type.
12-Inch Optical
Due to the significant costs associated with archiving data to 12-Inch optical technology, including the libraries, drive mechanisms, media, and on-going service contracts on the libraries and drives, this technology was announced end-of-life by Plasmon in April 2005.
With similar physical properties to UDO technology, 12-inch optical was the most secure, reliable media available at the time, when electronic records needed to be stored for many years on a media type that guaranteed authenticity of the records written, and protected against deletions and modifications of files stored on the media.
Although 12-inch optical technology is an end-of-life product, it is still widely used for applications such as FileNet, where data has not been migrated off the 12-inch FileNet OSAR library onto a UDO library or other storage device.