Optical Disc Archive Optical Disc Archive Optical Disc Archive is a storage technology that was introduced by the Sony Corporation. It uses removable cartridges, where each cartridge holds 12 optical discs. Each of the internal optical discs is similar to, but not compatible with, a Blu-ray disc. The latest version of the cartridge, that has a total capacity of about 3.3TB, uses discs that hold about 300GB each. The technology was publicly announced on 16 April 2012 during the NAB Show with the first units shipping in February 2013. Generation 2 of the Optical Disc Archive technology is scheduled for mid-2016. Generation 2
Optical disc drive inexpensive, are suitable where read/write capability is required. Disc recording is restricted to storing files playable on consumer appliances (films, music, etc.), relatively small volumes of data (e.g. a standard DVD holds 4.7 gigabytes) for local use, and data for distribution, but only on a small scale; mass-producing large numbers of identical discs is cheaper and faster than individual recording. Optical discs are used to back up relatively small volumes of data, but backing up of entire hard drives, which typically contain many hundreds of gigabytes or even multiple terabytes, is less practical. Large backups are often instead made on