Short: V1.5, Amiga Magneto-Optical Drive FAQ Author: mark_k@iname.com Uploader: mark_k iname com Type: docs/help Architecture: generic Amiga Magneto-Optical Drive FAQ 1.5 (4-Oct-99) Copyright © 1998-1999 by Mark Knibbs Changes since version 1.4 ------------------------- 1.5 4-Oct-99, sixth public release · Corrected number of sectors in mount files for 1.3GB 3½" disks. They actually have 605846 user sectors. Further independent confirmation of this would be appreciated. · Moved stuff about cleaning drive and disks to the new maintenance section. · Added warning about using the correct type of cleaning cartridge for cleaning the drive lens. · Mention that Fujitsu's latest 3½" drives have a seek time of 23ms. · Changed BlocksPerTrack and HighCyl values of PC Superfloppy and FFS, SFS 540MB mount files so that HighCyl < 32768. This should have no consequence other than to improve compatibility with old, badly written disk editor tools (e.g. the ProjectD EditorTool). · Various other minor changes. Here are some extracts from the FAQ. Introduction ------------ The Amiga Magneto-Optical Drive FAQ contains information about using magneto- optical (MO) disk drives with Amiga computers. It is freely distributable providing no changes are made. I hope the availability of this document will encourage more Amiga users to consider optical storage, instead of fragile magnetic media like Zip, Jaz and SyQuest. What are Magneto-Optical Disk Drives? ------------------------------------- Magneto-optical ("MO") disk drives are versatile removable storage devices, which use very robust and inexpensive media. You can use an MO disk just like a large floppy disk, or like a hard disk. Magneto-Optical storage has many advantages over other types of removable media: · Media life is at least 30 years, which greatly exceeds the life of magnetic media like floppy disks, Zip and Jaz disks. Some manufacturers quote media life of 50 or even 100 years. Data can be rewritten at least a million times, and read at least 10 million times; some manufacturers quote figures ten times this. This figure also exceeds that for magnetic media. · There is no physical contact between disk surface and drive head, so there is no possibility of data loss through a head crash. · MO drives are backwardly compatible, which means that if you upgrade your drive in the future, you will be able to read and write all your existing disks on the new drive. · MO disks are not susceptible to magnetic fields. · If, for example, you spill a cup of coffee on an MO disk, you can clean the disk surface and continue to use the disk. Cleaning kits are available for both MO drives and disks. Disk cleaning kits are very cheap. · MO disks are simple in construction, unlike some other kinds of removable media which may contain moving parts. This is another reason why MO offers greater reliability than magnetic media. · MO disks are available in several different capacities, which vary in price. Cost per megabyte is lower than all other kinds of random access removable media. · Unlike Zip, Jaz, SyQuest etc., MO drives and disks are not proprietary, and they are made by many companies. The disks are covered by various international standards. So you will not be stuck if your drive manufacturer goes bust, as happened recently to SyQuest. · Compared to other forms of optical storage, there are no restrictions on writing and rewriting data to MO disks, unlike CD-R or CD-RW. Also unlike CD-R & CD-RW, since the disk itself is protected by a plastic casing, there is no danger of data corruption due to the disk getting scratched. · MO drives normally automatically verify written data to guarantee data integrity. There is no such verification with CD-R, CD-RW or most types of magnetic media, so to be assured that the data has been written properly when using these, you would need to manually compare all copied files. · MO drives have much shorter seek times than PD and DVD-RAM drives. · Magneto-optical technology is well-proven. I believe the first ISO standard 5¼" MO drives were released in 1989 or 1990, with 128MB 3½" MO drives becoming available in 1991. 640MB 3½" drives have been available since 1996. Originally MO was largely restricted to professional use due to high drive cost, but over the past couple of years this situation has changed. · MO disks are convenient, compact and easy to use. 3½" MO disks are the same size as two floppy disks stacked on top of each other. They have a write-protect tab which works just like a floppy disk's.