Fujitsu 2.3GB MO Drives and Price Cuts Arrive

According to Fujitsu, the benefits of Magneto-Optical discs are that shock, vibration, moisture, dust and magnetic fields won't destroy the data stored on the media. The company has a whole line of MO drives and just announced a new 2.3GB bare MO gadget. The MCJ3230AP 2.3GB IDE drive nearly doubles the capacity of its predecessor, Fujitsu's 1.3GB line of MO drives. The new 2.3GB drive can read and write to all 3.5" MO media capacities, including 1.3GB, 640MB, 540MB, 230MB and 128MB, as well as Over-Write disks (640MB and 540MB). It provides a 19ms seek time, data transfer rates up to 8MB/sec, and an 8MB buffer size. Fujitsu also let us know that many of its MO disk drives will now have new lower price points. As part of the price reduction, the company will offer MO drives for as low as $219 for the DynaMO640AI 640MB drive, with new pricing for the 1.3GB and 640MB series of MO drives later this month. The new 2.3GB MCJ3230AP and storage media will be available in August, but we don't know yet how much they'll cost. Fujitsu plans on releasing an Ultra SCSI interface version of the drive by the end of the year. The company backs its MO disks with a lifetime warranty - which we presume only covers the disks and not the data they contain.