🚀 go-pugleaf

sandy@sandy.com (Sandy A. Meltzer) writes:

>I'm considering adding a 1Gb+ Optical drive (MO?) to my
>Win95/NT3.51 Pentium-based workstation and would appreciate
>some feedback about optical drives and manufacturers.

If you can wait a few months, do it.  MO technology is getting
much more common, and prices are beginning to drop quickly.  There
are many ~1GB MO drives around the $1-2k range right now, but Iomega
is introducing their own 1GB MO for ~$500 in the next few months,
I believe.  If the 1GB capacity is not a firm requirement, the 600MB
3.5" IEEE MO standardized drives should be hitting the market as
early as next month (Sony will have one out, probably others from
Fuji and IBM).  I have no idea about the street price, but I'd guess
at approximately ~500.  I would stay away from smaller 3.5" MO drives
at this point (unless you want a bargain).

Another thing you need to consider is the airflow direction in your
chassis, if you are planning to install an internal model.  I would
highly recommend a model that has dual loading doors to keep
out any dust.  Most power supplies suck in air from the front into
the chassis and out the back.  If your MO drive isn't of a dust-free
design, you will get a thin layer of dust on the lens which may
be hard to clean (even with a lens cleaner) without taking the
drive apart.

I've heard some rumours of the Fuji drives frequently failing in the
first 1-2 years, but I really don't know that much about it.  You
should consider the MTBF (with a grain of salt) as well as
the manufacturer's warranty (very seriously) before deciding on a
model.  I have a Fuji OEM'ed IBM MO drive, and aside from its
lack of dust-free design, I'm very pleased with it.  One tip in
increasing MO drive performance is to use a large cache (smartdrv
will do).

Hope that helps.
Dave.
--
Dave Ahn,  ahn@indigo2.medeng.wfu.edu   "When you were born you cried, and the
                                         world rejoiced.  Try to live your life
Medical Visualization Lab, Radiology,    so that when you die you will rejoice,
Bowman Gray School of Medicine           and the world will cry."  -1/2 jj^2