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Most definately much closer to a floppy. From StarCard Technology Page:

"A flexible magnetic disk is housed inside a cavity created between the top and bottom layers of the card."

"A window is provided on the bottom and a shutter that slides between the layers of the card, backs this window sealing the disk enclosure. An external mechanism (in the StorReader) can actuate this shutter opening the window and providing access to the recording disk."

Is it just me, or is this sounding very familiar? I think I have a couple hundred things around my room that fit this description.

Don't get me wrong though, having a 100 meg floppy the the size of a credit card would be great. If it can stand up to daily use and carrying, with the potential of scaling, then I may well seriously consider getting one when they appear locally.

Just watch you don't put in in your eelskin wallet!
(Yes, I know that was solved already.)

From the StorCard Technology page:

The StorCard conforms to ISO 7816-1 (Smart Card standard) including mechanical flexibility along the longitudinal and transverse axis without damage to the IC or the magnetic recording medium. The communication protocol is per the standard Smart Card Interface (ISO 7816-2 & 3) and via a unique bus implemented in the StorReader. ISO 7816 communication speed is 9600 baud, while the StorReader supports a sustained data transfer rate of 5 megabytes per second in the 100 megabyte StorCard, and scales in the 5 gigabyte design.

Looks like it is going to be smartcard compatable and adequately flexable.

More information about the cards here. The have magneti strips, are slightly flexible, and cheap. I just wonder how fast they are. Will they replace my Zips or DVD-RAM discs?

More info is available if you visit the company's website (which oddly isn't linked in the pcworld article).
From the site:

Storage capacity from 100MB to multi-gigabyte capacity* (in future generations).

Also, in the slideshow it shows a graph of the product scaling from 100MB in 2003 to 1 gig in 2004 to 5 gigs in 2005, at a constant price of $15.

So, they won't be selling high-priced large capacity drives, as they won't be available and when they are they will remain at the current pricepoint.

I think this could have some usefull applications, depending on how well it is accepted and whether they can actually produce a product that scales as well as they say.

Well, the built in encryption chip should be enough to make one smell rat, and looking over their webpage the front page bosts that their product solves "the increased concerns with information security for consumers, enterprises and content owners."

Digging deeper:

Security & Intelligence - industry's first intelligent media with the ability to authenticate an individual and his own data, to encrypt and secure the data, and to enforce policy information on how and when the data may be used.

Look like we have a winner...

According to their tech page on their web site, "Data can be transferred from the card to the reader and delivered to the host or client at 5MB per second with the 100MB product, and will scale with higher-capacity designs."

Also, a little further down, they mention "the StorReader supports a sustained data transfer rate of 5 megabytes per second in the 100 megabyte StorCard, and scales in the 5 gigabyte design."

So it sounds like it's 5MB/s, not 5Mb/s.

I've been to their site and had a quick look, but found only this:

ISO 7816 communication speed is 9600 baud, while the StorReader supports a sustained data transfer rate of 5 megabytes per second in the 100 megabyte StorCard, and scales in the 5 gigabyte design.

Does "scales" means what I think it does? It's surely too good to be true that, if the 100 meg card is 5 megabytes a second, that the 5 gig card is 250 meg a second. Yeah, that's too good to be true. Plus knowing me my math is probably off.

I'm guessing that since they mention USB but not USB2 that it's not fast enough for broadcastable video. But I can hope. :-)

From the website it suggest the card only contains the disc plus some simple electronics. The actual motor for the device is held in the reader.

But there are already PC card hard drives that can hold 5 GB of space. So if you are going to have to put it in a PC card adapter each time you want to use it then the size benefit is cancelled out.

are available here.

Well, at least some of the juicy technical details.

Well, at least it references an ISO standard (ISO 7816).

They have a very interesting white paper explaining how they`ve managed to make HD compliant disk without having it in an airtight sealed container. Clever stuff.

This site mentions a 5Mb/s transfer rate which I guess would be more than enough for DVD movies.

However, it says that this figure is for the 100Mb version and that it "scales" to the 5Gb version. What does that mean, I wonder? It will be 50 times faster for the 5Gb version? I don't think so, somehow - 50 times slower? That might be pushing it for DVD usage at 100Mb/sec..

Q.

The article says

Amazingly, within the card is an on-board processor containing integrated software controls that can encrypt data securely in real time.

so I went looking and found the StorCard website. It says

There are two types of cryptography logic; a PKI system providing authentication logic, and a block encryption algorithm, such as AES. The encryption keys for both the cryptography engines (supporting 1024 bit keys) are stored in local RAM, which is not accessible external to the card. All data on the StorCard's recording disk is encrypted and block encryption is done "on-the-fly".

What I am less thrilled with is their emphasis on storing biometric data and trying to get what they see as a huge amount of money being spent on ID cards.

According to the storcard website these cards have a datarate of 5Mbytes/sec the rotational speed is 3600 rpm and the average access time is 15 msec. All taken from the overview of the StorCard from the campany website.

According to the storcard website these cards have a datarate of 5Mbytes/sec the rotational speed is 3600 rpm and the average access time is 15 msec. All taken from the overview of the StorCard from the campany website.