Fujitsu developed the new drive and Sony worked to improve the media that comply with the new standard, and both companies are now working to launch compatible products by fall 2001. Fujitsu and Sony will exhibit prototype models of the enhanced GIGAMO standard drive and media at CeBIT 2001, the world’s largest IT trade exhibition, which takes place in Hannover (Germany) March 22 – 28.
The new MO products are expected to help facilitate high-speed file backup for commercial systems such as telephone switches and Automated Teller Machines, and they will also be ideal for storing and working with digital video and other large volumes of data. The new standard is fully backward compatible, accommodating all MO media ranging from 128MB to 1.3GB. In addition, it supports the Media ID function (announced in September 2000) for protection of copyrighted online digital content.
The newly developed 2.3GB GIGAMO standard requires minimal modifications to the optical recording/playing head used in the current line of MO drives. Higher-density recording has been made possible by using magnetically induced super resolution (MSR *2) technology together with the land/groove recording method (*3), resulting in increased recording capacity. Multiple magnetic layers of the 2.3GB GIGAMO media have been optimally designed to offer comparable storage reliability and playback/recording durability to that of the existing MO systems.
