"...Plasmon today announced plans to support Sony Corporation's next generation high-capacity, high-performance Ultra Density Optical (UDO) drive/media technology within its optical storage automation products, with product availability in 2002. Plasmon plans to integrate the first generation 40 GB capacity media/drives into its existing and future optical automation products which would provide substantial capacity increases to current and future 5.25-inch optical automation libraries. The UDO technology will support both RW (re-writable) and WORM (Write Once Read Many) media and will be contained in a cartridge with the same dimensions as the current ISO standard 5.25-inch magneto optical (MO) disk.

In the future, customers purchasing Plasmon's 5.25-inch optical libraries can take advantage of the increased storage capacity of the libraries when combined with the new UDO technology. The first generation 40 GB capacity UDO drive will increase Plasmon's 5.25-inch automation capacity by almost 800 percent within the same library when compared to the current 5.25-inch magneto optical drive technology. "The next generation UDO technology will provide a quantum leap in storage capacities and a real decrease in total cost of ownership for customers investing in optical automation," according to Rob McPherson, president of Plasmon IDE. For example, Plasmon's flagship M500 will have a capacity of 20 TB (terabytes) with the 40 GB UDO format integrated into the library as compared to 2.6 TB with the current 5.2 GB-8X magneto optical drive/media within the same M500 library..." NULL