Fujitsu 1.3GB MO-Disk

The magneto-optical disk from Fujitsu with 1.3GB capacity resembles an ordinary 3.5” diskette, but is slightly thicker and transparent. We used it with two Fujitsu drives.

MOD 3.5” Fujitsu “MCM3130AP”

Before describing this particular model, let’s say a few words about this type of devices in general.

Magneto-optical drives seem to have already lived through their happy times. They don’t have the popularity they had a few years ago and will hardly regain it in the future. Their work principle is the following: data write is performed with the help of an external magnetic field and a laser ray. First, the medium is erased, and then the data is written by changing the polarity of the magnetic field. Reading is performed with the laser that changes its polarity depending on the magnetic polarity of the surface of the medium.

Magneto-optical devices have rather limited application, which is mostly information backup. Their advantage over classical hard disk drives in archiving lies in higher reliability. You can change the magnetic polarity of the surface only by heating it up with the laser ray. So, accidental exposal to external magnetic fields won’t have any consequences for the data stored on a MO-disk.

The internal MO-disk drive from Fujitsu looks like a floppy drive rotated by 180 degrees (if you look at it as if you were inserting the disk). The front panel carries an eject button, which also serves as a status LED. The drive is attached to the computer like any other device; its back panel has power supply and interface connectors, and a block of pins with a jumper for drive’s positioning on the cable. Overall, everything is the same as by any regular hard disk drive.

This model supports the ATAPI (UDMA/2) interface. Its spindle rotation speed is 3637rpm. Data-transfer rate can reach 6.7MB/s, while read and write operations are performed at the maximum speeds of 1.7MB/s and 5.09MB/s. The buffer is 1844KB big. The drive works with 1.3GB media.