Magneto-optical drive

A Magneto-optical drive is a disk drive for computers. It can read and write data to magneto-optical disks. The technology was made at the end of the 1980s. Both 5.25" and 3.5" media exist. The disks look like CD-ROMs, but they are protected with a plastic cover. The MiniDisc is a Magneto-optical disk. The other disks look similar but have a bigger physical size.

How it works

The operating system sees (and uses) the disk like a normal hard-drive. 3.5" disks can hold between 128 megabytes (MB) and 2.3 gigabytes (GB) of data. 5.25" disks hold between 650 MB and 16.7 GB.

Resistance

All disks have a physical write protection switch (like 3.5" floppy disks). They are pretty resistant to data change, can support temperatures up to about 100 °C, and do not care much about light.

DVD-RAM disks are very similar in appearance, they are optical though.

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  A 650 MB, 3.5 inch disk

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  A 2.6 GB disk, this one is 5.25".

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  An opened MO Disk, showing the sectors.

Magneto-optical Drive Media

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  Visible sectors partition lines on a 130 mm 652MB magneto-optical disk. (1024 user byte, 17 sectors per track).

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  A 230 MB Fujitsu 90 mm magneto-optical disc.

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  Minidiscs are magneto-optical discs used to store music.