Iomega Ships New 12X Double-Layer DVD Drive

Storage peripheral maker Iomega Corp. introduced Tuesday its first DVD burner with double layering technology, thereby expanding the capacity of a DVD to 8.5 gigabytes.

DVD+R double layering is a iwrite-oncei recording standard. A double-layer DVD+R DL disc contains two recording layers of organic dye film. The top layer is semi-transparent, allowing the recording laser to focus on either the top layer or the bottom layer. When the laser heats microscopic regions on one of the recording layers, it creates permanent dots in the organic dye film. The resulting data can be read in virtually any standard DVD player or DVD-ROM drive.

The Super DVD Writer 12x Dual-Format USB 2.0 Drive is a Mac-compatible DVD+RW/-RW drive that is available now.

Supported formats of the new drive include DVD+R and DVD+RW (12x4x10x write, rewrite, and read speeds), DVD-R and DVD-RW (8x4x10x), and CD-R and CD-RW discs (40x24x40x). Bundled Mac-compatible software includes Charismac Discribe and MusicMatch.

The new drive costs US$249.95 and requires Mac OS X v10.2.7 or later and a G4 or higher with USB 2.0 connectivity.

As of this writing, the companyis Web site had not been updated with information about the new drive.