Increase media efficiency - Magnetic optical media cleaning is a
very important factor of system performance that is often over looked by
customers, this is due to multiple retries of the system hardware which recover
many errors and appear transparent to the user. However, this is an essential
part of proper magnetic optical media system performance, reduction of errors
and media efficiency.
How? - A small particle of debris the size of a
pen point, can cause many read / write errors, impact magnetic optical media
drive performance, cause a loss in media capacity, and in some cases cause
failure to recover customer data. Debris can migrate to other area's of the
media surface as well as to the optical lens of the drive. With proper media
maintenance severe problems can be prevented.
Why? - Magnetic optical media surface contamination can be caused
by many sources, and is largely dependent on the environmental conditions
of where the system hardware is located. Printers and scanners is a large
contributor to contaminate and should not be located in the same room as
Laser disk drives. A clean computer room with filtered air can greatly extend
the time between magnetic optical media cleanings.
Interval - Magnetic optical media cleaning should be performed on
a regular basis. This can be accomplished by starting with clean piece of
media, note the date and the media serial number, insert media into system,
then inspect the media every two weeks for surface contamination. When significant
contamination is noted on the magnetic optical media surfaces note
the date. The time between the start date and end date is the period in which
media cleaning should be scheduled.
Alliance Storage Technologies offers professional magnetic optical media
cleaning service at your site, or at the Alliance Storage Technologies technical
facility. Media technicians are factory trained and have proven experience.
Maintenance
