We have learned that Sony is increasing prices on Sony Magneto Optical Disk by 10% on April 1st, 2013. This price increase is due to lower demand and therefore higher per disk production cost.
Magneto Optical (MO) Disk are recorded using both an a magnetic field and an optical laser. The laser heats up the disk and the magnetic field is changed when the spot heated by the laser is approximately 390 degrees F. MO disk are used in a variety of storage and archival applications. These include, large disk libraries, medical imaging , document filing and many other applications that require stable long term storage. Sony offers both re-writable MO disk and WORM (write once read many) MO disk.
Sony 5.2GB Magneto Optical Disk – EDM-5200C
Magneto Optical disks are housed in protective removable cartridges. Because changing the magnetic fields can only be changed at high temperatures, the data on the MO disk cannot be accidentally erased. MO disk are capable of up to a million rewrites and data access times are less than 25ms – faster than CD-RWs and DVD-RAMs
Because the magnetic fields cannot be changed at normal temperatures, the data cannot be accidentally erased by random magnetic fields. Additionally, unlike magnetic tape, hard drives and other magnetic media, the recording head never contacts the disk so there is no potential damage from a head crash or wear and tear on the disk surface. Testing has shown MO disk to have an estimated archival life of greater than 50 years.
Current MO disk storage capacities range from 2.3 GB up to 9.1 GB,