IBM Corp reckons that it can be a force in the small form factor optical disk drive market and its Storage Systems Division in San Jose yesterday announced the MTA-3230 Rewritable Optical Disk Drive, a 3.5 drive developed with Philips Electronics Corp that uses optical platters storing 230Mb. It is fully compatible with 128Mb platters, rotates at 3,600rpm, has a 243Kb read-ahead cache and cache management to provide maximum data transfer rate of 1.47M-bytes per second. It comes in a 1 high 17oz package, dissipates 4.7W, and has an autowrite calibration sequence to optimise laser power to conditions. Samples are out next month at $700, with volume later in the quarter.
