Sony Storage Support

5.25" half height MO drive will fit into a standard 5.25" computer drive bay. The low power requirements of Sony MO drives make integration into an existing system easier. For systems with no internal drive space available, external MO drives with their case and independent power supply can easily be added to a desktop system or network server.

Yes. Optical drives can be affected by dust on the optical block lens. MO drives should be cleaned using a 5.25' lens cleaner for the drive. It is also important to keep your media clean using a manual disk cleaning kit. Intermittent media errors may result if there is dust on the optical block or the media surface.

root # fdisk b 2048 /dev/sda

// choose w (write) from the menu,
sda indicates the first SCSI drive.
Replace /dev/sda with the device file of your MO drive,
Also, match block size to media //

root # mkfs b 2048 /dev/sda

// answer yes to partition entire MO //

root # mount /dev/sda /mnt/mo
root # ls /mnt/mo          // lost+found appears
root # df                       locating sda
root # mount /mnt/mo   MO amber busy lights as MO mounts //

mo # cd /mnt
mnt # umount /mnt/mo        // MO amber busy lights as MO unmounts //

Using the gnome, you can copy and paste files directly into the MO folder icon just like you would in a Windows OS environment.

MO disks are coated with a special material, which can be magnetized, but only at a high temperature of approx. 390 degrees F (Curie-temperature). The data stored by magnetic charge on the MO media is not affected by magnetic charges of normal temperatures. Other magnetic recording media e.g., hdd, tape drives and floppy disk drives can easily be affected by random magnetic fields at normal temperatures causing data to be erased.

Typical applications for MO storage are Audio/Video editing, Document Imaging, Graphic Design, Desk Top Publishing, Document Filing, CAD/CAM, Engineering, Industrial Design, Medical Imaging, Digital Video, Multimedia.

MO drives use the SCSI controller driver in the Windows environment. As long as that driver is loaded properly and your SCSI termination is correct, then the drive should show up as a drive letter. You may need to update to the latest updates for Windows or get an updated SCSI controller driver from the manufacturer of the SCSI card you are using in order to support the MO drive.

An MO disk drive is a computer storage device which utilizes both an optical laser and magnetic field to record data on a special removable optical disk. This recording technology has a number of benefits for the user including high reliability and low cost per megabyte of storage.

Magneto Optical disks are coated with a special material which can be magnetized, but only at a relatively high temperature of approximately 300 degrees, called the Curie Point. Data is recorded by changing the magnetic field of the spot being heated by the laser. When the spot cools, it retains the orientation of the magnetic field, which represents a data bit.