Magneto Tape
Total Media stocks a wide variety of optical magneto products, including discs and drives, give us a call today for more details.
Part Number |
Imation Media & Imaging Supplies |
Price |
| 11776 | Imation 35GB Black Watch DLT IV Tape | $65.00 |
| 17170 | Imation DLT IV Tape w/label | $65.98 |
| 12919 | Imation Black Watch DLT Cleaning Tape Cleaning Cartridge | $100.00 |
| 16260 | Imation 160/320GB SDLT Tape I Tape Cartridge | $91.00 |
| 16398 | Imation Super DLT Tape I 160/320GB, Labeled | $92.00 |
| 16988 | Imation Super DLT Tape II 300/600GB | $212.00 |
| 16332 | Imation SDLT Cleaning Cartridge | $145.00 |
| 16399 | Imation SDLT 1 Cleaning Cartridge, Labeled | $154.00 |
| 16232 | Imation Black Watch Ultrium Gen 1 100/200GB, Labeled w/case | $67.00 |
| 41089 | Imation Black Watch Ultrium Gen 1 100/200GB, w/case | $62.00 |
| 41278 | Imation Black Watch Ultrium Gen 1 100/200GB | $67.00 |
| 16598 | Imation 200/400GB LTO Ultrium Gen 2 II Tape Cartridge w/case | $114.00 |
| 16599 | Imation LTO Ultrium II Gen 2 200/400GB Lsbled w/case | $110.00 |
| 16600 | Imation LTO Ultrium Gen 2 200/400GB Labeled | $109.00 |
| 17532 | Imation LTO Ultium Gen 3 400/800 Tape Cartridge w/case | $257.00 |
| 17533 | Imation LTO Ultirum Gen 3 400/800GB Labeled w/case | $215.00 |
| 17534 | Imation LTO Ultrium Gen 3 400/800GB | $214.00 |
| 17535 | Imation LTO Ultrium Gen 3 400/800 GB labeled | $214.00 |
| 17960 | Imation LTO Ultirum Gen 3 WORM 400/800GB w/case | $233.00 |
| 26592 | Imation LTO Ultrium IV 800GB/1.6TB w/case | $232.00 |
| 15931 | Imation Ultrium Universal LTO Cleaning Cartridge | $110.00 |
| 15849 | Imation LTO Ultrium Plastic Cases | $3.30 |
| 91270 | Imation Black Watch 9840 20GB 886 Tape Cartridge | $115.00 |
| 40902 | Imation Black Watch 9840 01/I 20GB 886 Tape Cartridge | $125.00 |
| 91833 | Imation Black Watch 9840 03 20GB 886 C-BCL Tpe Cartridge | $122.00 |
| 91831 | Imation Black Watch 9840 03/I 20GB 886 C-BCL INTZ Tape Cartridge | $125.00 |
| 41024 | Imation Black Watch 9840 04/I 20GB 886 BW L&ITape Cartridge | $125.00 |
| 90676 | Imation 9840 Cleaning Cartridge(100 cleanings) | $115.00 |
| 91829 | Imation 9840 Cleaning Cartridge w/EDP Bar code Label (100 cleanings) | $122.00 |
| 41333 | Imation Black Watch 9940 60GB Tape Cartridge | $141.00 |
| 41334 | Imation Black Watch 9940 60GB 2320' C-BCL INTZ Tape Cartridge | $152.00 |
| 41337 | Imation 9940 Cleaning Cartridge (100 cleanings) | $141.00 |
| 26552 | Imation DLT DataGuard Transport/Storage Case 20 Pack Yellow | $190.00 |
| 26553 | Imation LTO DataGuard Transport/Storage Case Enterprise 20 Pack Yellow | $190.00 |
| 26941 | Imation LTO DataGuard Transport/Storage Case Ultrium w/Polybox 20 Pack Yellow | $190.00 |
| 26890 | Imation DataGuard rf Bottom Insert Replacement Ultirum w/Polybox | $18.00 |
| 95P4436 | Ultirum LTO 4 Tape Cartridge - 800GB | $145.31 |
| 24R1922 | Ultirum LTO 3 Tape Cartridge - 400GB | $56.95 |
| 08L9870 | Ultirum LTO 2 Tape Cartridge - 200GB | $45.00 |
| 08L9120 | Ultirum LTO Tape Cartridge-100GB | $43.98 |
| 35L2086 | Ultrium LTO Universal Cleaning Cartridge (50 uses max) | $81.92 |
| 18P7534 | 3592 Tape Cartridge-300GB | $184.54 |
| 23R9830 | 3592 Tape Cartridge-Extended Data 700GB | $246.00 |
| 18P7535 | 3592 Cleaning Cartridge | $146.92 |
| 111.00100. | VXA V6 (62M) Data Cartridge | $29.95 |
| 111.00106 | VXA V10 (120m) Data Cartridge | $39.95 |
| 111.00103 | VXA V17 (170m) Data Cartridge | $66.95 |
| 111.00200. | VXA X6 (62m) Data Cartridge | $16.00 |
| 111.00206 | VXA X10 (124m) Data Cartridge | $32.00 |
| 111.00221 | VXA X23 (230m) Data Cartridge | $75.00 |
| 111.00209 | VXA X Cleaning Cartridge | $27.00 |
Optical Magneto F.A.Q.
A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. Both 130 mm and 90 mm form factors exist. The technology was introduced at the end of the 1980s. Although optical, they appear as hard disk drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.).
Initially the drives were 130 mm and had the size of full-height 130 mm hard-drives (like in IBM PC XT). 130 mm media looks a lot like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge while 90 mm media is about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc, but twice the thickness. The cases provide dust resistance, and the drives themselves have slots constructed in such a way that they always appear to be closed.
The disc consists of a ferromagnetic material sealed beneath a plastic coating. There is never any physical contact during reading or recording. During reading, a laser projects a beam on the disk and according to the magnetic state of the surface, the reflected light varies due to the Magneto-optic Kerr effect. During recording, the light becomes stronger so it can heat the material up to the Curie point in a single spot. This allows an electromagnet positioned on the opposite side of the disc to change the local magnetic polarization, and the polarization is retained when temperature drops.
Each write cycle requires both a pass for the laser to erase the surface, and another pass for the magnet to write the information, and as a result it takes twice as long to write data as it does to read it. In 1996, a Direct Overwrite technology was introduced for 90 mm discs, to avoid the initial erase pass when writing. This requires special media.
Magneto-optical drives by default check information after writing it to the disc, and are able to immediately report any problems to the operating system. This means that writing can actually take three times longer than reading, but it makes the media extremely reliable, unlike the CD-R or DVD-R technologies upon which data is written to media without any concurrent data integrity checking. Using a magneto-optical disc is a lot more like using a diskette drive than using a CD-RW.
While they were never particularly popular with consumers (the main consumer marketing being for the 90mm drives), 130mm drives had some lasting service in corporate storage and retrieval. Optical libraries, such as the Hewlett Packard 40XT, were created to automate loading and storing of the disks. A self contained unit holding 16 or more disks and connected by SCSI to a host computer, the library required specialized archival software to store indexes of data and select disks. Popular uses were for legal document storage and medical imaging, where high reliability, long life, and (for the time) high storage capacity were required. The optical libraries could also manually be used on a Windows 2000/XP machine by selecting and ejecting discs under the Computer Management icon's Removable Storage Service, but this was cumbersome in practice.
Recent progress
When it isn't being read, the magnetic field in the memory layer is the same as those in the displacement and switching layers. When a laser shines on the track, the switching layer, which has a lower Curie point than the other layers, demagnetises. It decouples from the displacement layer, whose "magnetic fence" around the track weakens, temporarily causing the track to swell to a readable size. Hi-MD recorders can also double the capacity of regular minidiscs with special formatting that renders the disc unreadable (or writable) by non-Hi-MD minidisc recorders.
As with all removable storage media, the advent of cheap CD/DVD drives and flash memory has made them largely redundant. Magneto-optical disks in particular were expensive when new, and while highly reliable, the slow writing time also was a negative factor.
