I/O METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OPTICAL STORAGE MEDIA

摘要

The present invention provides a network enabled multi-user configurable optical storage server. The device is easy to install and does not require client or server software. The server can be configured across a network through a series of HTML based web pages, or graphical user interfaces (GUI) provides by the server. The server can be accessed across a network by one or more users, terminals, or other network attached devices for substantially concurrent read/write access to one or more optical storage media. The server supports a comprehensive set of networking protocols and operating systems simultaneously. The server may support from one to hundreds of CD/DVD-ROMS. In an embodiment of the invention the server includes two stages of writing prior to committing to a write to the physical medium. This speeds both read and write access to the disk, allows concurrent user access to the disk, and greatly simplifies the mapping and file structures on the disk. In an alternate embodiment of the invention the server includes a hard drive for configurable caching of selected ones of the optical storage media.