Australian storage invention hits South America

Sep 21, 2005: The Imation Disc Stakka CD & DVD Manager, designed and developed in Australia, will now be sold in South America, in addition to the other 70 countries it is currently sold to around the world.

The Disc Stakka is an automated carousel that holds up to one hundred 12 cm discs and is linked to a PC or Mac computer via a single USB connection. Units can be stacked up to five high to create a tower with a footprint of not much more than a sheet of paper, that holds 500 discs.

It can be expanded so that 50,000 discs can be managed from the one computer, which equals more than 400 terabytes of data storage.

The Broadcasting Programming Centre of Japan is one example of a happy customer that used the system to help manage and protect archived broadcast programmes. The broadcast library of this institution has a collection of DVDs with more than 15000 TV programmes, radio programmes and commercials.

Hiroki Ohka, the manager of the Centre's Library Department, explained how useful the system is. Staff members can now search by programme name, broadcast data and theme, and then view their selected programme in one of the library's specially equipped booths.

"Radio and TV programmes are historical records of Japanese lives, customs and culture. We consider them to be national treasures. We use a tiered approach to manage our programmes. Those in the highest demand are copied onto the hard disk of an AV server. These programmes can be viewed at several booths instantly and simultaneously.

"For medium to high-demand programmes, we use a DVD auto-changer. This system has 79 DVD drives, can store 6000 DVDs, and takes about 40 seconds to locate and play a programme after receiving a client request. Lower demand programmes are stored using an array of Imation Disc Stakkas, which holds 4800 discs and costs us around 1/100th the price of the auto-changer."

He added that overall, the organisation finds the Disc Stakka to be a very cost-effective solution, which is critical for a not profit-organisation, such as this one.

"In addition to cost savings, our DVDs are protected against damage that can be caused by dust, UV light and improper storage. We thank Imation for helping to keep our national treasures safe and secure."

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