Delta Microsystem's SS-800W Optical Disk Drive

[Bill Tapley 423-1131]

We have been using Delta's SS-800W Optical Disk for almost two years now
and have found it to be a reliable and convenient way to archive and
access large volumes of data.  Our optical disk drives are installed on
3/50's and 60's running 3.5.

One side of an SS-800W optical cartridge will hold 374 Mb of data
formatted as a unix file system; the rest of the 400 Mb per side is an
indexing directory, allowing the user to describe the data that is on the
disk and to position to the different file systems that may be on the
disk.

We use one partition (490 Cyls) of a WrenV scsi disk (also from Delta) to
write to optical disk (via dd), filling one-half of one side of the
optical cartridge. After burning the file system to disk, the disk can be
mounted read-only and accessed just like any unix file system. 

When writing to optical disk, the scsi bus is real busy and it is best not
to do anything else on the system during that time. While reading from
optical disk, access is naturally slower than a magnetic disk, and the
scsi bus is again busy and slows the system down. No problem as long as
you don't install the optical disk on a server machine.

We have not had any problems with the disks that we have archived data on,
and have been using them allot. Our first optical disk drive, purchased
nearly two years ago, failed after a few weeks (bad servo) but was
repaired under warranty.  We have had no problems with the other 5 disk
drives that we are using.

It is real convenient to have so much data available, direct access, by
poping in the disk, running Delta's control program, and mounting the file
system read-only. The control program is easy to use and well documented.

It has been my experience that Delta Microsystems provides good supporting
software and documentation with their products, and has excellent customer
service support. 

                                             wct