What CD/DVD Roms should have been.. (with pics)

[Bryce W]

I was going to post these pictures under a "what the hell is this?" type thread since I have never seen this data format before. However Stealth, one of our writers, a member here and a friend of mine quickly pointed out that they are called "Magneto-optic" Disks.

Look at the bottom of this topic for the attached images.

I ended up having it given to me by a client who asked me to help them throw out some old CDs which they have collected over the years but wanted to make sure they didnt throw out something they needed such as driver disks. I found this disk and they said that I could have it.

Anyway, seeing that I cant ask what the hell it is, I still think that all CD and DVD roms should be in this format. It is already very similar to how normal CD/DVD Roms work, they only read from a certain part and work their way outwards, all you would need is the drive to open the protective door.

They would fit in all your CD holders as the case of the MO disk is similar to the size of a CD case. But the number 1 reason why CD/DVD roms should have been like this. It protects them from stratches! I treat my disks like royalty but they eventually slowly degrade from micro scratches.

What do you guys think?

[Stealth]

If I had the money for an MO disk and a stack of about a hundred or so 2GB MO disks, I'd be a very happy user - MO disks are much, much better at holding their data together because they use both magnetic and laser recording at the same time, and they verify their data while saving.

In other words, it's both resistant to scratches that plague optical disks and resistant to "byte rot" that's common with magnetic media.

[Blues]

man I remmeber these back in the day school had these for the macs like programs that ran off disc were these things

[Stealth]

Eh, back in those days even iomega Zip and Jaz drives were common. They didn't hold much of a capacity, but the were similar to MO disks.

[Bryce W]

Are you sure Stealth? I am pretty sure zip disks are closer to floppies with the magnetic round sheet rather than having a CDRom style platter.