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Plasmons demonstration of its Ultra Density Optical standard shows this technology is the heir apparent to magneto-optical storage.
UDO, available now, utilizes blue-laser technology to raise storage density to 30GB (MO topped out at 9GB per disk) and boosts transfer rates to 8MB per second for reads and 4MB per second for writes.
UDO will cost roughly $2 per gigabyte initially, but prices should drop as storage densities continue to increase.
Right now, Plasmon and other optical storage vendors are fighting to keep control of the WORM storage space, which has become a highly attractive market with the rise of legislative mandates for storage accountability.
Unlike hard-drive-based solutions, optical solutions are designed to be removable storage units. This portability allows IT managers to ship them off-site fairly easily.
Plasmon is promising backward compatibility with the developing UDO format through three generations, which should ensure that IT managers will still be able to read and recover data from older media several years from now.
For more information, go to www.plasmon.com.
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