History 2005: Kooky Carousel for 100 Optical Discs

Founded in 2003 by former HP executives, Australian start-up Opdicom has launched an unusual new product, the Disc Stakka, in collaboration with Imation, which has also added the product to its catalog. 

This Disc Stakka is a jukebox of 100 12cm optical discs, CD or DVDs, basically, which connect to the PC via a USB port, and allows for a disc to be sought and extracted using OptiTracker indexing software installed on the computer. All it does then, however, is extract a disc that must then be manually inserted in the CD/DVD device.

It’s possible to stack up to 5 of these devices on top of each other.

Why not have also integrated within the carousel an optical drive, which only costs 30 or so dollars, when the unit is sold for nearly $200? And won’t most users prefer ultimately to put more money into a 400GB hard disk drive that can store those hundred discs and access them quickly, with a capital Q, while the original media remain safely in their jewel boxes?

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 208 on May 2005 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.