gplan@umb.umb.edu (George Planansky) (04/08/90)
We would like to solve some of our disk space problems by plugging a read/write removable "optical" disk unit into the SCSI port of a diskless Sun 3/60. Mounting 300 megabytes of data in a file system on a removable optical disk has a lot of appeal to us. We would be adding data files to such disks from time to time, and perhaps reorganizing parts of their file systems, but mostly we'd be doing reads on them. What is the scoop on the available r/w optical drives? Is getting a unit a good idea, and if so, which one? Can the different vendors' units read/write each others'disks? What will our perception be, of disk accesses, compared to accesses of the nfs-mounted filesystem on our 3/280 server's hard disks? Are these optical disks "safe"? To what extent can these substitute for a regular hard disk, as far as a Sun 3/60 knows? We'd appreciate hearing of your experience with these units, and, in your evaluation and recommendations concerning them. Thanks in advance, George Planansky email: gplan@ra.umb.edu Atmosphere Environment Research Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 547-6207