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Access "Is the time right for optical storage?"

Published: 19 Oct 2012
Exploring new options for disk-based backup

This article is part of the Vol. 4 No. 4 June 2005 issue of Exploring new options for disk-based backup

Sometimes the stars and the planets in the technology universe align, and technology and user needs magically mesh. Optical storage, a technology that has spent a decade or more orbiting the far periphery of enterprise storage, is becoming more widely adopted. Higher capacities, improved performance and a more competitive price per gigabyte are propelling optical into more mainstream storage applications. Optical has enjoyed modest success for specific archival tasks, particularly in the financial and healthcare industries where a physical write once, read many (WORM) record is required, but it remains a more expensive solution than tape. Although the lowest cost magnetic disk today remains more expensive than optical on the basis of the cost of the total storage system (hardware and software), prices for magnetic disk storage continue to drop (see Optical storage economics, this page). "There is a lot of price pressure from disk systems," says Wolfgang Schlichting, research director, removable storage at IDC, Framingham, MA. Two recent developments are ... Access >>>

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