Sony announces third generation of its high-capacity Optical Disc Archive

Optical Disc Archive Gen3 offers greater capacity and speed, with 5.5 TB per cartridge and a transfer rate of 375 MB/s.

Sony has announced the third generation of its popular high-capacity filing system Optical Disc Archive including desktop USB drives (ODS-D380U), ibre-channel disk drives (ODS-D380F) and medium cartridges (ODC5500R) developed for secure, long-term data storage.

Each cartridge is made up of 11 “Archival Disc” discs, developed jointly with Panasonic, which provide 500 GB of storage per drive for a 5.5TB total capacity, which is an increase of more than sixty percent compared to Gen2. With an estimated lifespan of over one hundred years, Optical Disc Archive Gen3 is an ideal solution for long-term, durable and reliable storage.

The new Gen3 enterprise-class 8-channel optical drive reads and writes to both sides of the double-sided media to enable secure, fast data transfer. High speed of 375 MB/s read and 187.5 MB/s write, 1.5 times higher than the previous generation. Data integrity is ensured through “on-the-fly” verification combined with highly stable storage media. The included Fixity checking feature provides long-term auditable data integrity.

More security

The new generation is resistant to changes in temperature and humidity and is superior to external factors, including water, light and EMP (electronic magnetic pulse) events. Optical Disc Archive Gen3 can also reduce long-term expenses thanks to its low power consumption and environmental friendliness. Additionally, its reliability, feature set, and backward compatibility eliminate the need for data migration between multiple generations of media.

Sony is currently developing an enterprise-class library solution with Qualstar Corporation which uses Gen3 technology. The high-capacity solution will scale from 4.7PB to 50PB per library and can scale to multi-library cluster configurations capable of managing hundreds of petabytes of archive data. The new PetaSite EX solution will be on display at Sony booth 795 at SC19 in Denver, CO starting November 17, 2019.

ODS-D380U, ODS-D380F, ODC5500R units will be available in January 2020.