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1.8 Inch Removable Hard Drives Coming

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-what-I'm-talking-about dept.

bedessen writes "According to an article at PCWorld.com, a new type of removable storage known as iVDR will be demonstrated at January's Consumer Electronics Show. The iVDR standard (backed by a consortium consisting of a number of manufacturers) describes a lightweight, compact, removable hard disk drive compatible with a wide range of applications from AV to PC devices. The products on display will come in 2.5" and 1.8" form factors with parallel and serial ATA interfaces. Capacity will start at 80GB for around $170, but manufacturers hope to drop this to under $80 and well as double the capacity by next quarter." Here's hopin'

10 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Desktop machines? by Malic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You could make a RAID of these things the size of a couple of decks of cards. And I imagine that they kick out less heat.

    Seems like a candidate for use in the next generation iMac...

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  2. Just how useful is this going to be? by John+Jorsett · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The consortium plans to approach the movie industry soon and hopes to complete the standardization of its copy protection code by March, next year, Hioki said.

    In other words, "we're still working out how to cripple it in a Hollywood-approved way with DRM."

    1. Re:Just how useful is this going to be? by kilonad · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What's in it for them? With the storage business having such a low profit margin, it would seem that there's nothing in it for them. Until you realize that once a few companies start doing it, the rest don't want to be caught with their pants down if the *AA come around with their team of lawyers. They probably figure it's just cheaper and easier to do this now (possibly also in preparation for Palladium) than to get tangled up in a huge legal battle later on.

    2. Re:Just how useful is this going to be? by analog_line · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What's in it for them is avoiding goverment regulatory burdens such as have been threatened in the United States.

      While the profit hit may, in the end, truly turn out to be imaginary (I don't honestly believe that any side in this numbers game has the real answer right now) the political clout that the entertainment industry holds is very, very real.

  3. 1.8 inch removable hd's have existed for years by phr2 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    They're called PCMCIA drives and the older ones needed a type III slot. Toshiba makes a 5 GB one that fits in a type II slot now, and they make 1.8" embedded drives up to 20 GB that could fit in a type III slot except that their whole production is going to devices like iPod's. I hope they'll do a PCMCIA version soon.

    This PCWorld thing is about a drive in some weird bigger enclosure which seems pointless. They should just make higher capacity PCMCIA drives.

  4. are they delicate? by hfastedge · · Score: 3, Insightful

    just how delicate would these be....it still means nothing if I have to treat it like a baby. Id rather have tape disk still, which is probably way more shock resistant. True, this harddrive is selfcontained.

    Do i think the benefits of portability outweigh the fact that its still just a harddrive? No.

    Im all for solid state.

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  5. IBM? by Karamchand · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Though I know that IBM has sold its consumer hard drive assets to Hitachi I still have to wonder why IBM is not a member of this consortium, since IBM has a very active and large research department.
    Wester Digital is also "missing"...

    Anyone who knows more?

  6. Recommendation by Daengbo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like a great partner to these.
    Comments?

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  7. Parallel & Serial ATA? Where is Firewire? by leandrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    An obsolete connector and other yet vapourware...

    Why ignore the relevant, modern, already available standard, Firewire AKA IEEE-1394?

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  8. The real purpose: Copy protection by Brett+Glass · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is this consortium coming out with a "new" storage standard when so many good ones already exist? The answer can be found at http://www.ivdr.org/consortium/consortium_e.html, which the three working groups developing the standard. One is doing the hardware, and another is developing a spec for the file system -- neither of which is rocket science. But the third is focused on "security" -- in other words, DRM. This is the main purpose of the entire effort: To get the industry to standardize on a medium that's copy-protected from the get-go.