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Cheap New 1 Inch HDD Holds 1.5GB
SlightlyMadman writes "Cornice, Inc. has unveiled a new alternative for small devices requiring large amounts of storage. With an expected OEM price of about $100, it blows the smaller microdrive out of the water (at least until this fall). The days of cramming bulky 2.5" disks into mp3 players may finally be over."
The Toshiba 1.8" drives used in ipods made huge waves in portable MP3 designs. Granted, 1" is even better, but let's not forget the leaders in the field.
Kevin Fox
If that HD is packaged in an MP3 player we will have to pay a huge levy on that gigabyte.
It's called a Multimedia Jukebox - http://www.archos.com
20GB, plays MP3 and DivX simple profile (even with a video out port for TV), also records to MP3 audio or MPEG4/DivX video. Got one, it's a lot of fun.
Also available on ThinkGeek.com, or modded on eBay up to 60GB+
Any spoon would be too big.
I can't wait to have these start appearing in all sorts of Palm devices. The processors and screens of these guys have long caught up to the PC's of min 90's, but the sotrage capacities have been hovering around late 80's levels with the micro-drives being too large to fit in.
Yes, but battery capacity hasnt. When alcohol powercells come in, maybe, but until then, no way. Adding a hard disk to a palm device would bring the length of time between charges down to daily, not acceptable. :(
Well, considering 1GB CompactFlash cards are around $200, $100 for 1.5GB is pretty cheap for ultra-small storage.
Performance is microdrive-comparable - over 3Mbytes/second generally. Spinup is usually 1 second. Power use is similar to microdrive, but it's 3.3v only.
It *does* give an ATAPI interface, but the point is the drive is embedded - you plonk the drive controller chip (which has pins that form an ATAPI interface to your own circuitry) onto the board with the rest of your circuitry, and a teensy twenty-something way connector connects to the drive mechanicals.
This way, the drive mech is smaller, you don't need bulky CF plugs and sockets, and it's integrated deeply into your system where you can optimise the design for power, speed, whatever.
If you check out recent press releases/rumour sites, you'll notice that Samsung announced a 1.5GB digital camcorder at CES, and Rio showed a 1.5GB minature MP3 player at CES. Noone else makes a 1.5GB drive that I know of, so I guess this is what's inside those two toys.
at $100 a piece, it is still pricey. last time, i bought my 512 MB CF card for $68. So CF cards, which come in different sizes, fits in PCMCIA slot with just a passive connector, requires no driver, .... is only 35 % more expensive. I guess, I will stick with CF. The prices of CF cards are falling faster than any microdrive, iomegra click drive, etc may even go below $100/GB before the time, this drive comes in market. I have PDA, Digital Camera which take CF card natively. Also I have a laptop and printer which read CF card with just a passive adapter.
You seem to forget that the article states that it isn't designed as a replacement to CF cards and the like as it was designed to be embedded into the device eg. Apple iPod.
The reason for it not using the standard ATA interface was to bring the number of components down. This allows them to make the drive smaller and cheaper.
It also states the the drive isn't just a shurnken IDE drive but a complete redesign to tailor the drive for small size.
Heat can be a real issue. I've heard horror stories of Sharp Zaurus's (Zaurii?) fitted with 1Gb IBM CF Microdrives hitting 70degC... Rather worrying, methinks.
You win again, gravity!
Try one of these. iRiver iFP-195TC 512MB, tiny, 20 hours from a single AA battery. Amazon started selling them last week. I love mine.
There's 4 Gigabyte cards intro'd at CeBit back in March. How long before this takes over the drives used in high end (expensive anyway) MP3 Players.
Who is this "Poster" guy and why does he own all of my comments?!?
So basically its a propriatory interface. Its cool don't get me wrong but I don't think IBM will be scared just yet.
That depends on the interface, doesn't it? If it's dog-simple to support on the far end it might take off big time. If they provide a small macro for designers to use in FPGAs or ASICs, standards aren't a major issue. Ditto if it presents itself as an internet-like device you can get to through a stock serial port and a minimal stock stack.
Looks like five wires. Five? Power, ground, three left over. Clock, TxD, Rxd? Bidirectional balanced serial bus and a reset/shutdown signal? Motor power, logic power, ground, bidir bus? Power, ground, balanced bus, EMI ground? (Maybe the flexy-board is double sided and it's ten wires?)
I want to see a description of this "simple and original" interface.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way