JP2001110159A - Disk cassette - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain a small sized recording medium full of a handling property having a large capacity without a reduction of a storage capacity caused by forming a casing into a card size. SOLUTION: In this disk cassette 1, a pair of disk shaped recording media 3 is rotatably housed in the card sized casing 2, and moreover a pair of opening parts 12, 14 for reading/writing and opening/closing shutters 15 thereof are prepared in the casing 2 in accordance with respective recording media 3.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a disk cassette for storing a disk-shaped recording medium.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art At present, a 3.5-inch floppy disk is mainly used as a representative example of a portable recording medium. This floppy disk is a disk-shaped magnetic recording medium with a magnetic material coated on a film, about 90 m in length and width.
It is housed in a synthetic resin case (shell) with a thickness of 3 mm. Although this floppy disk has a storage capacity of at most about 1 Mb in the past, although it depends on the format method, recently the capacity has been increased due to improvements in recording media, etc., and a product reaching 200 Mb has been commercialized. Have been.

[0003] As the capacity increases, it can be used not only for conventional writing and reading of documents but also for storing and reproducing moving images, backing up digital photographic images, storing and reproducing midi information, and the like. Information can be stored.

[0004]

However, when used for the above applications, the current 3.5-inch floppy disk has a housing made of synthetic resin and housed in a relatively soft shell. Therefore, due to its size and material, it is easily damaged by external force, and dimensional accuracy is not always good. On the other hand, since the portable type is approximately square with a length and width of about 90 mm, it is often impossible to fit it in a pocket or a wallet of a chest, for example. Therefore, a special floppy case is required, and handling is poor.

By the way, recently, credit cards,
Various cards such as an IC card and a PC card are widely used. The size of these cards is about 54mm in width and about 8 in depth.
It is 5.6 mm, almost the same as or slightly larger than the vertical and horizontal dimensions of a business card. It can be carried in a pocket, wallet, etc., so it is easy to handle.

However, when this card size is applied to the above-mentioned high-capacity floppy disk, the disk area cannot be increased as compared with the conventional substantially square floppy disk, and the storage capacity is reduced accordingly. I will.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and provides a disk cassette in which the housing is a card size and the storage capacity is not reduced.

[0008]

In order to achieve the above object, a disk cassette according to the present invention accommodates a plurality of disk-shaped recording media in a card-size casing in a rotatable manner, and according to each recording medium. The housing is provided with an opening for reading and writing, and a shutter for opening and closing the opening.

That is, in the disk cassette of the present invention, for example, by using two recording media serially, the storage capacity becomes twice as large as the total area of one recording medium, and the capacity is reduced to a card size. Drop can be prevented. In addition, since the housing is a card size, 3.5
It is less likely to be damaged than an inch floppy disk or the like, and the dimensional accuracy is improved.

In this case, the disk drive in which the disk cassette is mounted has only one read / write head, and when the capacity of one recording medium becomes full, it may be inserted again and stored again. Alternatively, as a double head, when the capacity of one recording medium becomes full, the recording may be switched to the other recording medium.

As another usage, when the disk device side is a double head, by simultaneously processing two disks in parallel, one can be used for main storage and the other can be used for backup. The reliability as a storage means increases.

It is preferable that the respective rotation centers are supported in the housing so that the peripheral portions of the recording media are vertically overlapped with each other in a non-contact manner. According to this configuration, the diameter of one recording medium can be made as large as the width of the housing, and a large storage capacity can be secured.

Further, it is preferable that a non-contact type memory is built in a corner in the housing. Generally, a floppy disk has a label for displaying its information content, and the information content is written by hand, printed, etc., but it requires time for pasting, failure, or writing. there were. On the other hand, in the above configuration, the seed memory replaces the role of the label, and when the disc device is loaded with the disk cassette and started, a title or the like corresponding to the storage content of the recording medium is displayed on the display, and the title or the like is displayed. By specifying it, it can be used for purposes such as retrieving the corresponding stored contents. In addition, since it is not clear from the appearance what information is present, information confidentiality is high.

[0014]

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. Figures 1-3
1 shows a card type disk cassette according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

In the figure, this disk cassette 1
A pair of left and right disc-shaped recording media 3 are rotatably housed in a case 2 which is a case having a card size of about 54 mm in width and about 85.6 mm in depth.

The recording medium 3 comprises a hub 4 and a disk-shaped storage unit main body 5 integrated with the periphery of the hub. The storage unit main unit 5 includes, in addition to the high-capacity floppy disk described above,
It can include general writable and readable recording media such as a hard disk or a magneto-optical disk such as an MO.

The diameter of each recording medium 3 is
(The vertical dimension in FIG. 1). Therefore, the peripheral portions of the two recording media 3 overlap each other at a predetermined overlap margin D in the center of the case 2 and are separated by a predetermined distance d in the vertical direction, thereby preventing mutual interference between the two recording media 3. I have.

The case 2 is thin and half-split, and comprises an upper half 6 and a lower half 7. For example, both cases are made of metal or synthetic resin having an electromagnetic shielding function. And a hard case integrated by the

A pair of supporting projections 8 and 9 for rotatably supporting the hub 4 of each recording medium 3 are provided on the upper inner side of the upper half 6 so as to be provided with a step according to the step between the two recording media 3. ing.

The lower half 7 has a pair of shaft holes 1 through which a spindle shaft of a disk device (not shown) for rotating each recording medium 3 connected to the hub is inserted.
The openings 0 and 11 are also formed with steps.

On both sides of the upper and lower halves 6 and 7 in the longitudinal direction, step portions 6a and 7a which are thinner than the entire thickness of the cassette 3 in the width direction are formed mirror-symmetrically, and these step portions 6a and 7a read the disk device side. Openings 12 and 14 to which the writing head is supplied are formed, and these openings 12 and 14 are usually closed by a shutter plate 15 movable in the width direction. Further, a partition is provided inside the lower half 7 and at a corner near each recording medium 3, and a non-contact type memory 17 is fixed to the partition.

The above-described disk device into which the disk cassette 1 is loaded is not shown, but an opening for taking in and out corresponding to the size of the disk device, a detecting device, a shutter plate opening / closing device,
It includes a spindle device, a head for reading and reading, a reading device for the memory, and the like.

In this case, the shutter plate opening / closing device, the spindle device, the head, and the reading device may be of a single type, or may be of a double type according to the arrangement of each part of the disk cassette 1. In the case of the single type, when the capacity of one recording medium 3 becomes full,
When this is displayed on the display unit, a configuration can be adopted in which the user can continue writing and reading by loading the disk cassette 1 in the reverse direction. In the case of the double type, when the capacity of one recording medium 3 becomes full, a system of a serial processing system which automatically detects this when the capacity of the recording medium 3 is full and writes and reads the recording medium 3 on the other side. Can be. Further, in the double type, both the heads are operated at the same time to perform writing and reading operations in parallel, and one recording medium 3 can be used for main storage and the other recording medium 3 can be used for backup. In this case, the storage capacity is reduced by half, but when one of the data crashes, the other data can be extracted and used, so that the data can be reliably stored.

Each non-contact type memory 17 stores the contents recorded on each recording medium 3. When the cassette 1 is loaded into the disk device and started, the non-contact type memory 17 corresponds to the storage contents of each recording medium 3. A title or the like is displayed on the display, and by specifying the title or the like, it can be used for a purpose such as retrieving the corresponding stored content. In this case, it is not necessary to display the information content by printing or the like on the surface of the disc cassette 1, so that the information confidentiality is increased.

FIG. 4 shows a second embodiment. In this embodiment, a pair of shutter plates 15 for closing the opening for writing and reading is provided on each recording medium 3 along both longitudinal directions of the case 2. Correspondingly, it is almost the same as the first embodiment except that it is arranged to be mirror-symmetrical.

FIG. 5 shows a third embodiment. In this embodiment, a pair of shutter plates 15 for closing the opening for writing and reading is provided on each recording medium 3 along one longitudinal direction of the case 3. Correspondingly arranged in parallel, these shutter plates 15 are almost the same as the first embodiment except that they are integrated via a connecting portion 15a.

As described above, the position of the shutter plate 15 is
It can be set freely according to the arrangement of the disk devices. Further, in each of the above embodiments, the diameter of each recording medium 3 is set to be the full width of the case 3 and the peripheral edges thereof are supported in the case in an overlapping state. In this case, the storage capacity is slightly reduced, but the thickness can be reduced. Further, in each embodiment, two recording media 3 are accommodated. However, two or more recording media 3 may be accommodated, and two non-contact memories are arranged corresponding to each recording medium 3. But of course it is good.

[0028]

As is apparent from the above description, in the disk cassette according to the present invention, a plurality of disk-shaped recording media are rotatably housed in a card-sized housing, and each disk-shaped recording media is used in accordance with each recording media. Since the housing is provided with an opening for reading and writing and a shutter for opening and closing the opening, there is no reduction in storage capacity due to the card size of the housing, and a small, high-capacity recording medium with excellent handleability. Can be obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a plan view of a card-type disc cassette according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a longitudinal sectional view taken along line AA of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing a second embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a perspective view showing a third embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Disk cassette 2 Case 3 Disc-shaped recording medium 12, 14 Writing / reading opening 15 Shutter plate 17 Non-contact type memory

Claims (1)

[Claims] A plurality of disk-shaped recording media are rotatably housed in a card-sized housing, and an opening for reading and writing and a shutter for opening and closing the reading and writing openings are provided in the housing for each of the recording media. Disc cassette characterized by the above-mentioned.