World's smallest Hard Drive?

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  • Claymonkey
    Super MURCer
    • Dec 2000
    • 1871

    #1

    World's smallest Hard Drive?



    WHOA! this will be extremely sweet! 4gb on something the size of a quarter? Count me in if Toshiba pulls this off.

    Just think of the possibilities: thumbdrives, PocketPC/Palm's, cameras, mp3 players........
    Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
    ________________________________________________

    That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.
  • UtwigMU
    Super MURCer
    • Jul 2002
    • 5651

    #2
    IBM had 300GB drive in this form a few years ago. After news on websites I never heard about it.

    Comment

    • Claymonkey
      Super MURCer
      • Dec 2000
      • 1871

      #3
      Re: World's smallest Hard Drive?

      Originally posted by dparadis
      http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/0...eut/index.html

      WHOA! this will be extremely sweet! 4gb on something the size of a quarter? Count me in if Toshiba pulls this off.

      Just think of the possibilities: thumbdrives, PocketPC/Palm's, cameras, mp3 players........
      actually it was a 1GB drive and you had it in multiple areas... you could buy it in a pcmcia. it was called a microdrive. and it ended up being slower than flash memory
      Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
      ________________________________________________

      That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

      Comment

      • ZokesPro
        Serial Murcerer
        • Sep 2000
        • 8325

        #4
        It's just a TAD smaller than IBM's microdrive.

        Titanium is the new bling!
        (you heard from me first!)

        Comment

        • Claymonkey
          Super MURCer
          • Dec 2000
          • 1871

          #5
          Yes but four times as large, and with by the nature of a denser platter, faster. Not to mention a few years more development.

          That platter is the size of a quarter and the Toshiba more like a nickel. Just compared the pics and the width of the ibm is about the length of the toshiba.

          All I know is I wouldn't want to be hte one putting these together.

          Anyone ever use the microdrive? how was its ruggedness?
          Last edited by Claymonkey; 22 March 2004, 12:07.
          Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
          ________________________________________________

          That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

          Comment

          • ZokesPro
            Serial Murcerer
            • Sep 2000
            • 8325

            #6
            @dparadis: I'm curious about it's rugedness too. Something that small looks really fragile, I imagine that one little bump might throw it all out of whack.
            Titanium is the new bling!
            (you heard from me first!)

            Comment

            • Claymonkey
              Super MURCer
              • Dec 2000
              • 1871

              #7
              my only guess is if Apple uses Toshiba's drives for the ipod they must be on the right track. Still, until I see so reviews I'm going to hold my breathe
              Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
              ________________________________________________

              That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

              Comment

              • cjolley
                Super MURCer
                • Aug 1999
                • 7672

                #8
                Originally posted by ZokesPro
                @dparadis: I'm curious about it's rugedness too. Something that small looks really fragile, I imagine that one little bump might throw it all out of whack.
                Physically it might work just the opposite of that because of the way mass and strength scale with size.
                So it might be less affected by bumps than a larger drive.
                chuck
                Chuck
                秋音的爸爸

                Comment

                • tonny
                  mini MURCer
                  • Mar 2003
                  • 47

                  #9
                  Hitachi has annouced 2 and 4gb microdrives for quite some time, but I don't know if they are available on the market yet.
                  They should be faster than the older <1gb models.
                  nospam

                  Comment

                  • az
                    Moderator
                    • Feb 2001
                    • 9336

                    #10
                    I'm using a Microdrive for some time now, it fell to the floor (wood) a few times, no problem at all. It automatically "parks" the heads within a few milliseconds after any read/write operations, so it's quite safe. The only performance problem I have with it is its latency - it needs to spin up before it starts writing, which of course takes longer than a CF. But it was cheaper (it isn't cheaper now, I think), and certainly faster than SanDisk CFs (which were painfully slow - now their Ultra II cards are among the fastest you can get).

                    AZ
                    There's an Opera in my macbook.

                    Comment

                    • Wombat
                      Super MURCer
                      • Aug 2000
                      • 9498

                      #11
                      Originally posted by tonny
                      Hitachi has annouced 2 and 4gb microdrives for quite some time, but I don't know if they are available on the market yet.

                      http://www.hgst.com/hdd/micro/4gb.htm
                      Yes, they're available. They power the mini iPods, for one thing.
                      Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

                      Comment

                      • Kurt
                        Super MURCer
                        • Feb 2000
                        • 1839

                        #12
                        Originally posted by az
                        I'm using a Microdrive for some time now, it fell to the floor (wood) a few times, no problem at all. It automatically "parks" the heads within a few milliseconds after any read/write operations, so it's quite safe. The only performance problem I have with it is its latency - it needs to spin up before it starts writing, which of course takes longer than a CF. But it was cheaper (it isn't cheaper now, I think), and certainly faster than SanDisk CFs (which were painfully slow - now their Ultra II cards are among the fastest you can get).

                        AZ
                        Hard drives have had the automatic head parking for some time now...

                        Comment

                        • Jammrock
                          The Berserker
                          • Aug 1999
                          • 8661

                          #13
                          My Dad has had an old 340 MB IBM Microdrive in his digital camera for about 3 years now. We had some minor corrupt sectors a few months back, but after we backed up the data and gave the drive a format it's been working flawlessly since. Besides that ... no problems at all.

                          The new 2 GB and 4 GB MD's are supposed to be significantly faster and more durable. They are fast enough to stream 640x480 video with 16-bit stereo audio without trouble ... supposedly. Don't have one with a newer camera to test it.

                          Jammrock
                          “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
                          –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

                          Comment

                          • az
                            Moderator
                            • Feb 2001
                            • 9336

                            #14
                            Kurt, of course they had. I was just saying that to point out that the heads can almost never hit the platters, because they're already parked when the drive hits the ground when it falls.

                            Now, flash cards have the edge - we'll see what becomes when the 4GB models become available retail.

                            AZ
                            There's an Opera in my macbook.

                            Comment

                            • spadnos
                              MURCer
                              • Jun 2002
                              • 859

                              #15
                              According to the spec sheet, the 4G microdrive can write at a sustained 4.3 - 7.2 MBytes per second. That corresponds to about 14x-48x. (for some reason, the industry standard for 1x is 150kB/second - the speed of an audio CD. Why they use this for CF cards is beyond me )

                              - Steve

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