Cost of MO media is much lower than other removable media like Zip, Jaz and LS120 disks. LIMDOW media is more expensive, but still works out cheaper per megabyte than other types of removable media.

This section illustrates the relative price differences between MO disks and other types of removable media. It is not intended to be comprehensive or up-to-date or to cover all countries, just as a guide to how much cheaper MO disks are. Check a current computer magazine for up-to-date prices. Macintosh magazines are likely to have more adverts for MO drives and disks than PC ones.

Here are some typical costs for various types of MO media in the UK. Most were obtained by looking at all the adverts in a Macintosh computer magazine, and taking the lowest advertised price. The prices below exclude 17.5% VAT (sales tax), figures are in pounds sterling:

Media type          Cost (£)  Cost/MB (p)
128MB 3½"               4        3.13    
230MB 3½"               4        1.74    
640MB 3½"              10        1.56    
640MB 3½" LIMDOW       12        1.88    
650MB 5¼"              10        1.54    
1.3GB 5¼"              16        1.23    
2.6GB 5¼"              25        0.96    
5.2GB 5¼"              60        1.15    

Media type          Cost (£)  Cost/MB (p)
100MB Zip               6        6.00    
120MB LS120             6.70     5.58    
230MB SyQuest EZFlyer  15        8.70    
  1GB Jaz              50        5.00    
1.5GB SyJet            51        3.40    
  2GB Jaz              58        2.90    

If you're in the United States or Canada, two web sites which may be useful for finding cheap media are http://shopper.com/ and http://www.pricewatch.com/. Using the search facility on these sites to find e.g. 640MB disk prices is quite simple. I found 640MB disks under US$15 each, under US$14 per disk for a pack of five on the shopper.com site.

Unlike proprietary systems like Zip and Jaz, MO drives and media are made by many different manufacturers. This is partly why MO disks are so much cheaper. Unlike Zip and Jaz, where Iomega makes a large profit on the media (which allows them to sell the bare drives quite cheaply), different manufacturers of MO media are competing. MO disks are made by at least BASF, Dysan, Fujifilm, Fujitsu, IBM, Imation (3M), Maxell, Maxoptix, Olympus, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, TDK and Verbatim.