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From: croley@walt.cc.utexas.edu (David T. Croley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Floptical upside-down cake
Keywords: data fade
Message-ID: <16402@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 1 Aug 89 18:40:26 GMT
References: <246300027@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <348@wet.UUCP> <2161@sjuvax.UUCP>
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Reply-To: croley@walt.cc.utexas.edu (David T. Croley)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
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In article <2161@sjuvax.UUCP> dcarpent@sjuvax.UUCP (D. Carpenter) asks:
>Someone mentioned this alleged problem of "data fade" some while
>ago and no one ever responded.  This strikes me as a fairly
>serious question.  Is there any reliable information as to whether
>or not this is a genuine problem (or is it merely a rumor, like
>the one about deteriorating compact discs about a year back)?


There is no "data fade" problem associated with the magneto-optical
disk used in the NeXT.  "Data fade" has been a problem with the two
other types of optical disks: phase change and dye-polymer.  Also there
have been problems with limited read/write cycles for dye-polymer
systems.  The THOR system that Tandy announced very prematurely is based
on the dye-polymer method.

Most optical drives on the market now are magneto-optical drives.
The data on magneto-optical drives is expected to last somewhere around
ten years or more.  I have heard that this is twice that of conventional
magnetic hard drives.  This has to do with the way the polarity of
individual bits of data are lined up.

===============================================================================
David T. Croley                               The University of Texas at Austin
croley@sleepy.cc.utexas.edu
croley@(pick a dwarf).cc.utexas.edu        "Don't believe everything you read."
===============================================================================