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."

Comments

The days of cramming 2.5" disks was over in 2001

[KFury]

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.

Re:It's fine IF....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.