PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Japanese electronic giant Sony has unveiled a new mass storage format based on cartridges of up to 30 high density optical discs.
The ODS-D55U is equipped with a high-speed USB 3.0 interface and will come in storage capacities ranging between 300GB and 1.5TB. The company reckons the new standard "will deliver superior long-term storage capabilities, which are enabled through the use of media built to withstand changes in temperature and humidity, and is dust and water resistance."
The company looks to be working with a number of industries such as broadcasting, citing firms like BSkyB and China Central Television as the company explores the "potential for utilization of optical disc media in their archive workflow."
The idea of bulking cartridges of up to 30 optical discs just goes to show the capacity disparity between hard drives and optical storage systems, even when using Sony’s fancy 128GB per-disc quad layer BDXL format.
Sony’s release even illustrated a bulky storage unit which consists of robotics to shovel in and out cartridges from large stacks into the drives.
One has to wonder if it’ll be price competitive compared to just filling a rack up with multi-terabyte hard drives. Probably not, but then for archiving the onus tends to be on reliability rather than quick retrieval.
