Low-powerered Ethernet Hard Drive?

WotPeed asks: "The company I work for builds extremely sensitive electric and magnetic field sensors. The project I'm just starting needs to use a hard drive to store the digitized data for long-term measurements (no more than 20GB). Unfortunately the hard drive has to be external to the sensor because it generates too much magnetic interference (hard drive needs to be at least 20 feet away). I'm therefore building an ethernet link into the sensor so that it can connect to a remote hard drive. Wireless is an option for a later revision but we're going with wired ethernet at first to keep things simple. There are plenty of network attached storage devices out there but they all assume they will be used in an office environment, and therefore consume a LOT of power. I'm looking for an ethernet hard drive that consumes less than 10W (this system will be used outdoors and runs on 12V batteries). Does Slashdot have any suggestions before I roll my own? I don't need any of the fancy features found in most NAS solutions...I just want a hard drive I can FTP to."

Comments

IBM MicroDrives?

[Bastian]

I imagine that MicroDrives consume very little power due to their small size and the fact that they can be powered by a PCMCIA slot.

I'm sure the hard drives used in many MP3 players such as iPods also consume very little power. . .

how sensitive?

[JDizzy]

Ever heard of Near-End-Atenuation? No? Its the electo-magnetic interferance suffered by telecomm gear when lots a wires draw near each other at the switch. Well, thats the snow-ball effect. No single rain-drop thinks it is the cause of the flood! Anyways, if this sensor gear is so sensitive, then ethernet might be too noisy, electro-magneticly speaking! I would sugest a fiber-optic linkage with a low-powered led that is significantly less noisy, in relative terms comparied to a wire. In an ideal situation the sesor would be away from the data collectors anyways. Oh, and BTW - wireless would in theory trip the sensor too! Seems as if optics is the only real true solution, in my mind anyways. ;)