Optical jukebox

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An optical jukebox is a robotic data storage device that can automatically load and unload optical discs, such as Compact Disc, DVD, Ultra Density Optical or Blu-ray disc and can provide terabytes of tertiary storage. The devices are often called optical disk libraries, robotic drives, or autochangers. Jukebox devices may have up to 2,000 slots for disks, and usually have a picking device that traverses the slots and drives. The arrangement of the slots and picking devices affects performance, depending on the space between a disk and the picking device. Seek times and transfer rates vary depending upon the optical technology.

Jukeboxes are used in high-capacity archive storage environments such as imaging, medical, and video. Hierarchical storage management is a strategy that moves little-used or unused files from fast magnetic storage to optical jukebox devices in a process called migration. If the files are needed, they are migrated back to magnetic disk. Optical disc libraries are also useful for making backups and in disaster recovery situations.

Jukeboxes typically contain internal SCSI based recordable drives (CD-ROM, CD-R, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, UDO or Blu-ray) that connect directly to a file server and are managed by a third party jukebox management software. This software controls the movement of media within the jukebox, and the pre-mastering of data prior to the recording process.

Before the advent of the modern SAN and much cheaper hard disks, large-volume storage on DVD was more price-efficient than magnetic media. Jukebox capacities have greatly increased with the release of the 50GB dual layer Blu-ray (BD) format, with a road-map to increase to eight layers and 200GB per disc. The current format allows 35TB of storage from a single 700 disc jukebox.