Abstract

Multichannel recording is the most effective way of increasing the data transfer rate in optical disk drives. Recently, 3- and 4-channel recording have been studied using laser diode (LD) arrays and write-once disks.^1,2 However, multichannel recording characteristics in magneto-optical (MO) disks, which have more severe signal and noise problems, have not been reported. This paper investigates the read and write characteristics of an experimental 5-channel MO disk drive with a monolithic LD array. The data transfer rate is 5 MByte/s, which ranks with that of conventional large magnetic disk drives.

© 1989 Optical Society of America