Abstract

Rewritable optical disks offer high capacity and reliable removable media, yet they penetrated only small, niche, markets. When we compare the specifications of optical disk drives with those of non-optical magnetic 'hard'-disk drives, we see that the non-optical drives have over three times shorter seek time. With modern virtual memory systems like Unix, OS/2, Mac, or Windows NT, disk access time has strong effect on the overall system performance. If optical disks are ever to replace non-optical magnetic ones, they must be much faster.

© 1998 Optical Society of America