Sony's Unveils Blue Laser Disk Family

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May 17, 2004 (7:43 AM EDT)

Sony Electronics will begin shipping its blue laser-based Professional Disk for DATA (ProDATA) next month, offering storage capacity of up to 23 GB on a disk. Three models are available--an internal SCSI, and external SCSI, and USB.

"They feature sustained 11 MB/second read and 9 MB/second write transfer speeds, offering a quantum leap in performance over existing optical storage formats," the firm said in a statement. The drives are offered in both write-once and rewritable versions. The prices for the drives range from $3,000 to $3300.

Sony listed some of the technical improvements in the drives. The ProDATA devices use a blue-violet laser to obtain the short 405-nm wavelength--a significant improvement over the 650-nm red laser wavelength used in CD and DVD drives. The shorter wavelength creates the higher storage density.

The ultra-thin media cover layer for recording results is five times denser than that of a DVD, Sony said. Also contributing to the creation of higher recording densities is a narrower track pitch. Another innovation is the disk's 16-MB cache, which reduces errors by easing CPU load.

The media comes wrapped in a resin cartridge to protect it from outside contaminants.