Computer CDROM Drives

See also:

• Building Computers
• Mass Storage Devices
• Hard Drives
• Flash Storage
• Network Attached Storage
• DVD Drives

General Information

• 2010-Oct-25: Pioneer has announced a 128GB BDXL burner (BRXL-6FBS-BK). [9426]
• 2010-Jun-06: Titanium Oxide might be used to massively increase optical storage densities, perhaps reaching the 25TB per disk level. Finally we will be able to experience disk burning times measured in weeks! [9170]
• 2010-Feb-08: InPhase Technologies has announced their 300GB Tapestry holographic drives will ship in 2006. Now InPhase is saying they will be shipping a 600GB write-once system in the fall of 2007, while the disks are not cheap at $180/each the drives are insanely expensive at $18,000. Looks like a big flop to me. They have kind of missed their shipping date, they have shown the 300GB drive at NAB in April'08 and claim that it will ship in May'08 (about 2 years late). But it's still the ridiculous $18K for a drive and $180 for a 300GB cartridge, so that's not price competitive with a 3.5 inch 300GB hard drive in an external USB enclosure. Even if you were to write copies to a few drives for redundancy it is just not competitive. And in Aug 2008 we started hearing about layoffs at InPhase. InPhase delays their 300GB holographic drive until late 2009, by which time it will be beyond obsolete - however, the article also mentions that GE is developing something that might compete in the 300GB disk field. In Feb'10 the InPhase saga came to an end. [3717]
• 2009-Oct-04: GE has shown some 1TB holographic optical discs. But who knows when they might become real products? [8595]
• 2009-Jul-20: Slashdot discusses how long CD-Rs actually last, a recent TechARP article reported that in CDs burnt less than 10 years ago 10% of them had some sort of read failure. [8304]
• 2008-Dec-02: Pioneer has developed a 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray disc. They think that re-writable versions will become available in the 2010-2012 time frame. Of course by then you'll need 10 to 20 of these to backup a single SATA disk, so our backup problems are not solved. [7285]
• 2008-Aug-05: Pioneer has found that a 20 layer version of the Blu-ray disc (yielding 500GB) is feasible. They are targeting something in the 2010-2012 time frame to head off competition by holographic storage systems. [6631]
• 2008-Mar-01: Mitsubishi's corrosion-resistant DVD-R disks promise about twice the lifespan of conventional DVD-R disks. [5198]
• 2008-Jan-10: Kodak's professional grade CD-R and DVD-R disks are supposed to have a data storage lifetime of 100 years (their archival Gold Preservation CDs has a longer lifespan). [4631] [1]
• Toshiba is going to work with the Optware holographic technology, first generation disks are expected to be in the 100-200GB range. [3756]
• How about 100TB optical disks? [3755]
• Here's a CDRW drive that connects via an SATA interface. As of April 2004 this appears to be one of the first such drives. [3754]
• The multi-incompatible DVD standards mess might finally be over, there is now agreement between 9 of the big players on Blu-Ray DVD recording which will put 27GB per layer onto a single DVD. So on a double sided dual layer disk (4 layers in total) you could, in theory, achieve 100GB of storage. [3753]
• Here's an updated press release that claims samples will ship in the 3rd quarter of 2002. Here's some more news (6-Apr-02) on holographic DVD storage. This gets mention on Slashdot (16-Jul-02) as some ex-Sony engineers have demonstrated this. [3752]
• Some time in the future CDs might hold a tera-byte, but various "holograpic techniques" have been touted as being just around the corner for a long time now, I think I remember hearing similar claims back in the 1980's, so don't depend on it! [3751]
• The first consumer DVD-R drives are starting to show up now, here is a review of the Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R/CD-RW unit. This Slashdot artical asks for user experiences with recordable DVD drives. A DVD and CD compatibility chart, and another one here in the DVD demystified FAQ. Meritline.com has blank DVD media. [3750]
• I have used a Yamaha 426 SCSI (4x write, 2x re-write, 6x read) drive for over two years now with very few problems. In December 2000 I added a new drive, a Plextor PX-W1210S which does 12x burn, 10x rewrite and 32x read. I chose the Plextor over the 16x Yamaha because the Plextor has the new Burn-Proof system (from Sanyo), this system will pause the burning process before a buffer under run occurs, and once sufficient new data has arrived it will resume burning. This means that you can safely use the highest writing speeds even when burning in a challenging environment (like gathering files from across a LAN). So far I am quite happy with the Plextor and have even started to use the CD-ResQ backup image software that came with it. [3749]
• A CD/DVD drive with robotic changer to allow for automated ripping of up to 25 CDs at a time. [3722]
• NIST releases a report on CD longevity [3721]
• Information on a holographic drive from Hitachi and Maxell [3720]
• In March 2005 an alliance was formed to develop holographic storage disks, they are expecting to put 1TB of data onto a single disk [3719]
• More info on the InPhase holographic storage, still to deliver their first version in 2006. [3718]
• The holographic optical disk (about 300GB initially) could be shipped to customers in 2006. It looks like Turner Entertainment may be testing these soon. [3716]
• Finally someone has demonstrated data playback (movies of course) from a 1TB holographic optical disk that's CD sized. [3715]
• ASUS is going to make a series of optical drives that run quietly. This is a big pet peeve of mine, until drive speeds hit about 24x they were all nice an quiet, but now a spinning CDROM drive can be the loudest part of a computer. And really, for what good purpose? I really don't think one needs to build a separate "quiet drive" model, all you really need is to add a jumper to the back that limits the drive maximum speed to about 24x. You could make this setting overridden via a command issued over the IDE bus by some utility software, in the event you want to use the drive in high speed mode temporarily. [3714]
• Plans are a foot for 1.5TB DVD ROMs by 2010 [3713]
• Powerfile makes large (100+ disks) optical juke boxes for data archiving [3712]