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Microdrive Technology Rebounds Thanks to iPod Mini

Posted by timothy on from the 4-gigs-for-cheap dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A few years ago Richard Menta over at MP3 Newswire did a lengthy review on the IBM Microdrive and declared it would significantly alter the MP3 portable market if IBM did one thing - drop the price. That never happened and it prompted Menta last year to declare the iPod's more cost effective Toshiba drive made it moot and he put the Microdrive on his 2002 MP3 loser list. Since then the drive technology was acquired by Hitachi who convinced to Apple to use it for the iPod Mini. The Mini's recent success prompted Menta to revisit his previous write-off. Interesting view of the up and down travils of any technology and how each change can have dramatic effect on its success and failure."

26 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Pretty annoying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just bought a 4 GB Microdrive on eBay for $299, before running across this article that explains how to get a 4 GB Microdrive for $50 less than the going eBay price by buying and taking apart an iPod Mini.

    Apparently all of the 4 GB Microdrives on eBay were obtained precisely this way.... which may explain why the iPod Mini has sold out everywhere despite being a relatively-bad deal compared to the 15 GB model. Hitachi is clearly selling these drives to Apple at or near a loss, for whatever strange reason.

    1. Re:Pretty annoying by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also you can pick up a 4gb Nomad for 199, and rip out the microdrive also. Ipod mini isnt the only one using the 4GB microdrives that sell for 400+ dollars retail.

    2. Re:Pretty annoying by tsunamifirestorm · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Could someone explain to me what you use the hard drive for? other mp3 players? digital cameras?

  2. high price by mix_master_mike · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The whole IBM premium pricing for "compelling innovations" is pretty interesting. Why would they keep the price for so high for so long - was someone else purchasing the drives for another procuct?

    Hitachi is probably profiting nicely from this.. It's too bad they don't have CFlash cards that are big and cheap yet, seems that's far down the road.

    --

    mix_master_mike
    vafrous

    1. Re:high price by John+Harrison · · Score: 4, Interesting
      How far down the road do you think it is? There are 8GB CF cards out there, but you have to pay through the nose for them for now. In 18 months what do you think they will cost? 512MB CF cards (and Microdrives for that matter) used to be expensive, now people pick them up without much thought.

      4 GB CF cards will be cheap sooner than you think.

      --
      Lasers Controlled Games!
  3. Hrmm by TheKidWho · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hrmm... this got me thinking... Is it possible to replace the 4gb iPod Mini HD with one of those new 8gb CF cards?

    1. Re:Hrmm by notsolinear · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why not buy the next larger iPod for ~$1,100 less...

  4. Versus "normal" hard drive based mp3 players? by dnobel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anybody know if these smaller microdrive based mp3 players are less prone to damage due to physical shock versus an ipod or nomad zen like device?

    1. Re:Versus "normal" hard drive based mp3 players? by CAlworth1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      >>I have never heard of anyone breaking an iPod by jogging with it.

      Nor have I, and I have owned two, and know probably 20 to 30 people with them, and have never heard of any hard drive failures. Battery problems, perhaps, but these are regular computer users with very little idea about what they should expect from a product, so they keep buying. Short of near-catastrophic failure, they aren't going to quit using them, or quit suggesting them any time soon I think.

  5. How crash resistant are microdrives? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm always wondering if these drives can experience crashing or data corruption if it gets hit hard while it's running? Is it really a spinning hard drive or is it something else?

    1. Re:How crash resistant are microdrives? by Tyrell+Hawthorne · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, it is just a very small hard drive. Have a look at this picture.

      As for the sturdiness, I can say that I've had no problems with mine for the few years I've had it. I've taken a few thousand pictures with it, but I haven't dropped the camera when it was reading or writing to it. However, according to what I've read they seem to be good in this aspect. It isn't solid state, so it's not as rugged as that, but you don't have to worry too much about it in normal conditions.

    2. Re:How crash resistant are microdrives? by Large+Green+Mallard · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Bill Biggart was shooting the World Trade Center collapse using a digital camera with a Microdrive.

      He tragically did not survive, but the Microdrive did.

      This particularlly grotesque example convinced many that Microdrives weren't anywhere near as fragile as some people thought

  6. PDAs? by fastdecade · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With all this high storage for MP3s, why don't PDAs come with built-in 5 or 10GB?

    Yes battery life suffers, but we already have colour screens and fast processors - the days of plugging in the palm every month or so are gone, and many users are used to recharging on a daily basis.

    It would be nice to fill the PDA with work docs, technical docs, encyclopaedias, useful apps, and a complete backup image - not to mention all the music!

  7. Sinclair Microdrive from the 80s by axolotl_farmer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone remember the Sinclair Microdrive?

    Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the ZX81 and Spectrum line of computers did not believe disc drives had a future. He invented the microdrive. Cheap, fast and with low power demands.

    The microdrive had small cartridges with a tape loop running inside. The Spectrum version held ~100 k or so of data. They were built into the Sinclair Ql, and was available as periphals for Spectrum (Timex in the US).

    It was very soon forgotten except by us old Spectrum afficionados!

  8. Plans? by H8X55 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder what folks will do with all the left over iPod minis and MuVo2s after they pull the drives for storage.

    any ideas?

  9. Re:Think outside the square by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The cheaper disk capacity becomes, the faster people come up with ways to consume it. When CDs came out everyone was excited because something that took 20 floppy disks fit in a tiny "corner" of a CD. (Okay, so they're round, they don't have corners, just edges. But you know what I mean.) Now microsoft office comes on two CDs, that's 1.3GB if they use them up, and only use 650MB CDs. Now we have DVDs, 4.7GB for recordable/single layer which is almost six and three-quarter (700MB) CDROMs. How long before they're old hat? If you wanted to back up a disk image file or something, they might not be big enough. (I am ignoring tape because it sucks. I realize it fills some needs well, though.)

    The fact is that people wouldn't be buying portable hard drives if they didn't need the storage.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  10. It's not the firmware. by Murmer · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It's the filesystem, not the firmware. The iPods apparently use an exotic, but the problem is easily fixed. I don't know if it's easily un-fixed, but if you're going to tear open an iPod for the contents, you probably don't care about that much either way.

    So, anyway, I don't have the URL handy, but the word is that once you reformat those things they work correctly; it wuold obviously not be cost-effective for Apple to bump production costs by insisting that Hitachi munge their firmware, or to waste development time and money doing it themselves.

    --
    Mike Hoye
  11. Re:IBM Storage Tech in Mini-ipods? by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I know that you're joking and it is rather funny, but I just had to point out that I have a 340 Meg microdrive that I've had for over 3 years, and it's survived not only heavy usage but it's been dropped numerous times.

    Microdrives were one aspect of hard drive technology that IBM got right ;)

  12. "Thanks" to iPod? by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps the reason Microdrives fell out of favor wasn't just the price point. With the exception of raw data transfer speed, solid state Flash memory is superior in every way. Portable devices are battery constrained, subjected to extraordinarily rough treatment and great temperature extremes. Flash memory is many times better than MicroDrive in all those critical areas.

    Finally, Microdrives are fading away because flash memory capacities have been increasing as their cost decreases (in addition to the hardware advantages). All we are seeing here with the iPod Microdrives is a temporary reduction in cost-per-byte over flash memory. This artificial bubble will not last, and flash memory will (continue to) dominate in the long run.

    Dan East

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:"Thanks" to iPod? by msgmonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There has never been a time a time where Flash memory has been cheaper than hard disk storage, so it's no way a "bubble" nor artificial.

      Producing a flash memory is much more complicated
      then getting a piece of metal/glass and covering it with a magnetic material.

      Of course the price of Flash will get lower, but will only happen with feature shrinks and new technology as economies of scale will only go so far.

  13. Flash vs Hard drive by magicianuk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't have the figures to hand, but I'm sure someone will correct me ...

    I believe that Flash memory can be rewritten 100k times before failure ... now that's a lot of saving new music files! However hard disks can be rewritten millions of times, which is really good for things like FAT tables, windows swap files etc.

    For things like music, photographs etc. Flash is a much better technology, just a fair bit more expensive than hard disks (at the moment). But for computer storage and in particular swap file space, flash could fail (in particular memory locations) faster than an iPod battery! Of course this may be bypassed by some sort of checksum/bad sector system or a usage balance across flash so that the swap file doesn't use the same physical memory address for long before moving onto another area of memory ... ... just a pondering, no real point!

  14. Re:A new floppy drive by mst76 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    In this day and age, where computers are so widely used, and our data integrity is vital, we still rely on data storage methods that use moving parts. Nothing lasts forever, but magnetic media always has a nasty habit of failing much sooner, mainly because it still relies on a system vulnerable to friction. Now microdrive technology is rebounding? When is this dinosaur going to die!? Then again, maybe that's the reason it's still around. If it didn't fail, we wouldn't have to buy a new one.
    A small rant: why hasn't Compactflash completely obliterated the floppy drive yet? The only thing required would have been replacing the FDD with a small slot for CF. The back of the slot can simply be connected to the IDE connector on the motherboard with a pin-adapter, and every CF card just behaves like a standard IDE hard disk. Every BIOS, OS and motherboard already includes full support, even ancient MS-DOS. All that is needed is a slot and a cable. I blame the fragmentation of flash memory standards for this, with MMC/SD, Smartmedia, xD, Memory Stick, and probably even more wannabe standards, all trying to get a piece of the pie.
  15. artificial bubble? by porky_pig_jr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    come on, hard drives is a moving target as well. Their density grows fairly rapidly. What do you think? CF capacity will go up and price will go down, but hard drive will remain as it is now. Rather silly thought, I would say. Expect the price difference be in the range something like 1:10 (hard drive to CF) *not* on a temporary basis, but well into the future. By the time we can get 8GB CF for $1,000, there will be 8GB microdrive for $100. Capiche?

  16. Microdrives are great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We've been putting microdrives in the compact flash slot of our mini-itx motherboards. They are $49 for 340 Mb, perfect for embedded applications, such as POS, for instance, and can hold several years of data.

  17. Lots of reasons.. by Cyno01 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    People like their floppys. I have teachers at my school who save to a floppy or even a (retch) zip disk instead of the network storage. Also, as you mentioned, the fragmentation of standards. I have a sony camera, it takes memory sticks, try finding a computer that ships with a built in (like floppys are built in) "magic gate" slot thats not a vaio. Also, eveyones computer has several usb ports and probably one or two on the front. Everyone and their mother has a usb drive nowadays, hell, i have one on my watch. You can even boot from those if you want. Lastly, the floppy killer and any solid state removble memory at the moment, the CD-R. CD writers are cheap, less than $20 after rebates. The medias even cheaper...

    All figues from office max...

    Lexar 64MB CF Card, $39.98, $/Mb = $ .62
    50 pack of floppies, $14.98, $/Mb = $ .21.
    Lexar 256mb USB "Jump Drive", $49.98 after rebate, $/Mb = $ .19.
    50 Spindle 48x CD-R, Free after rebate, $/Mb = $0.00.

    Even without rebates, the cds stay the cheapest and the usb drive, while slightly more than the floppies, retains its edge over them with portability, speed, and ease of use.
    --
    "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
  18. Go to $400, and there are by michaeldot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you can make a $300 PDA with, say, 512MB of storage for music (or whatever), it seems it'd sell like hotcakes. I know I'd gladly buy one.

    An iPAQ H2210 costs around $300-$350. It is pretty good (400 MHz XScale chip, 16,000 color display, etc) and has both SD and CF memory expansion slots.

    Add a 512 MB CF card for around $100 and there's your high capacity PDA.

    I have one and it works well, battery life is good. Of course, I'd like to put a 4 GB Microdrive in it. ;)