Slashdot Mirror
Guinness's World's Smallest Hard Drive Record
ketbra writes "CNN reports that Toshiba has received the Guinness World record for the smallest disk drive for their new 0.85-inch HDD. (Covered on Slashdot a while back) The technology editor from Guiness made the comment that "Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago". "
Imagine what they are getting themselves into. Will companies now apply for largest screen? Fastest start-up time? Fastest processor? Quietest fan? Largest spam mailing?
At last, a hard drive thats also a suppository. Just what we need after a few too many rounds of Guinness.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
You look at the picture and say "Damn, that's a big quarter."
The bigger the inside, the smaller the outside. I've already lost 2 hard drives this way... When will they stop?? Is it too much to ask for something at least one cubic foot?
Is it strange to think that hard drive is cute ?
Not sure why, but it just seems adorable in a little puppy dog kind of way.
dude needs a raise to upgrade his 2gig clunker
did you forget to take your meds?
I find Guiness World Records for computer parts strange. Everyone knows that all parts are in a constant upgrade cycle. 0.85 today, 0.80 tomorrow.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
What will we do when our watches have a BSOD?
My computer about a decade ago had a 500 meg HD, now I've got a pocket USB drive with about the same capacity.
Now my porn is more accessible than ever.
I remember reading Guiness Book of World records as a kid, 20 years ago, and things have changed a lot. I'm sure the technology section has expanded considerably. Plus, thats a really cool hard drive. its so tiny!
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
insert your 'size does matter' joke here
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
To set the record for how many you can eat in a minute using a cocktail stick?
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Was anyone else supremely disappointed to see the word 'Guinness' (possibly mispelled) and find that the article was not about beer, with this being the day before St. Patty's day and all?
(Offtopic +1, Beer)
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Am I the only person that immediately thought, "Wow, 1 bit!".
One more thing to lose. I can't wait for the day when I need tweasers and a magnifying glass to replace a HD.
I have an old 10 meg drive. You know the kind. Huge and heavy. Looked it up day, it sold for about $700 back in the old days.
Now I imagine how many of these little guys would fit into the same space.
This is the best part of being around computers for me. Watching things change.
Any of you ever look on in wonder while the salesman demonstrated the Sol Terminal Computer?
RAID array of these things. I'm being serious, really.
Just think in a normal 3.5inch drive case you could probably fit at least 30 of these drives (lets say 1.5inch x 1 inch for each drive with two 3x5 layers, should leave plenty of room for electronics). Given the tiny size of each drive the seek times are probably phenominal) and even if each one wasn't all that fast or even reliable they could be combined to make an incrediably fast drive (using RAID5 or similar internally) with amazing seek times. BUT it might cost an arm and a leg, unless mass manufacturing could bring prices WAY down.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Smaller disks generally mean smaller margins of reliability, whether that's because of missing safeties or just smaller margins for error.
I bought an MP3 player a while ago (iRiver iGP-100), which has a "reduced" HD. That worked well for a while, but recently I've lost everything from the 300MB mark and up.
I don't know why this happened, and frankly I don't care; I'm just happy that I have a three-year warranty, and they're letting me upgrade to a newer model which uses a larger, and thus safer, HD. For free. (Apparenly they didn't have replacement drives in stock; the law is the law, though.)
Well, enough about me. Now, about these drives: Would you trust your data to one of them?
In Communist Russia, the hard drives shrink YOU!
does it run linux?
i guess.. more on point... how do you access it? It would seem a ribbon cable would be bigger than the HD!
Anyway.... IDE, SCSI... is it something I could put in my box right now (if it were out)? Wow... imagine a RAID array full of 15000 of those or so....
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
What most people keep forgetting is that the magnetic coercivity for various "hard" metals
(see: http://midas.npl.co.uk/midas/content/mn042.html ) is increasing at an exponential rate due to premium compounding of basilic materials such as Voxnobium and Permidiite from Argentina and a couple of other smaller central-American mine sites. The sources are NOT consistant and when you add the likelyhood of rejecting glass bonding agents such as Anser albifrons (from Colitus, Greece no less), we are reaching the maximal limits of the technology.
We have come a long way from manual soft-iron core wound with copper sheathing, though!
Calculating Rho for that could be done with a simple saucer calc box. The rare earth metals are nearly impossible to grade due to the Rufus index and this also makes manufacturing a CONSISTANT base to be problematic.
Ohura
I didn't see anything big enough to connect the cable to... :-)
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
That would be Guinness' not Guinness's or I would accept a few pints of the stuff.
It's one thing to have a book of records that's based on bar bets, and things that just involve getting a bunch of semi-skilled people together to do.
Does anyone care about corporate achievements in the Guiness record books? (other than the corporations, that is).
If they want in to the book, get 1139 people with golf carts, and break the record for longest golf cart parade.
I just think about the Guiness book being about things that are done almost solely for getting into the book, with no significant redeeming qualities other than getting someone's name in print. You know -- longest toenails. Worst smelling shoes -- the types of things that the average person could pull off with a bit of dedication, and not needing a multi-million dollar research facility, and not being directly linked to a company's product development.
How about 'shortest MTBF' for the next hard drive record?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Apple, Creative and other people who make these HD-based mp3 players really should use hard drives like this. One of the main reasons that I haven't bought an iPOD yet is because of the size of the thing...
This is fantastic, right? I mean, I'm sure this is old news to the Slashdotters here (but for me its new, and I'm just an anonymous coward)
:)
What affect will this have on robotics architecture? if any?
I imagine the applications for digital cameras will be excellent.. no more paying through the nose for limited run CF cards.
I guess I'm being unrealistic, but I eagerly await the day when extremely powerful computers will be the size of my cell phone and monitors can be rolled up like a piece of paper. Any step forwards towards that, however small.. is excellent
Have a great day!
Thousands of geeks applied to Guinness for creating the smallest linux distro. At the end of the day, only 3 were left standing.
Just do it
I have a 5MB MFM drive in my garage.
Wow! Now I can bring my own pr0n collection with me all the time, and I can use it...
Wait, no, I can sure watch it, but I certainly won't be able to use it!!!
The first hard drive I ever bought was only 5 megabytes (no, not gigabytes). That's way smaller than the one in the article.
Guinness record for world's smallest disk drive
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 Posted: 11:23 AM EST (1623 GMT)
Toshiba is expected to sell the tiny drive later this year.
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's Toshiba Corp said on Tuesday that Guinness World Records had certified its stamp-sized hard disk drives (HDDs) as the smallest in the world.
The electronics conglomerate's 0.85-inch HDDs, unveiled in January, have storage capacity of up to four gigabytes and will be used in products such as cell phones and digital camcorders.
Toshiba, whose 1.8-inch HDDs are used in Apple Computer Inc's hot-selling iPod digital music players, for example, aims to start producing the 0.85-inch HDDs by the end of 2004.
"Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago," said David Hawksett, science and technology editor at Guinness World Records.
Consider two geeks in a pub (yeah, it's a stretch, usually one pint and they're under the table babbling about some OS or Kirk&Spok or making Monty Python references before passing out, ..):
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That is absurdly impressive. A 4 GB HD that tiny... You just know that thing's going to be in every single MP3 player 2 years from now.
Am I the only one irritated when improvements get called innovations?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Yes,
We can all be super spies. With gigs of data in a watch, we can sneak into foreign embassies and video tape almost everything in sight.
Consumer market digital camera with 4 gigs to hold the pictures...
PDA with 4 gigs to put you data
Ultra-Micro-Itx with a full computer the size of a Marlboro pack, and that just to accomodate 4 usb ports and a power adaptor...
Smallers disks means ultraportability up...
I, for one, Welcome our Masters Microlords 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I wouldn't buy a small HD if space/weight was my concern... I would go for flash memory or equivalent technology. The HDDs will stay a bit longer, but I would be surprised if we still use it in 15 years from now.
How many MB/GB can this thing hold? How does it compare to IBM's (or is it Hitachi's) microdrive?
As much of a geek as I am, I really could do without 40 gigs on my wrist. Especially since it's not solid state... I can't even imagine the problems this drive will have on small wearables... I have a hard enough time keeping my regular watch from not breaking, I would hate to have to worry about gigs of data as well.
whoever modded the parent as a troll needs to go back to university and get some basic Geophysics & chemistry.
The parent post was RIGHT ON the mark.
Never use scissors and glue to manually edit documents. The data is stored much too small for the naked eye, and you may end up with data from some other document stuck in the middle of your document.
The package said "Windows XP or better. Pentium Class Processor or better"... So I got a Mac with OS X
So does this mean I will be able to get a mini squared ipod? that will not only play music but be able to get lost even easier! cool sign me up!
And what flavour is your iMac?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Everyone in the industry knows that Toshiba hasn't made small hard drives, they've bred huge people
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
I mean, seriously. People used to have to really work hard at breaking records before. And Guinness occasionally had to work hard to find them. Now, it's just a natural, virtually unstoppable progression for all "records" related to technology. Truly lame. The technology secion of Guinness has become a newspaper, effectively.
Get rid of the tech companies and bring back the human freaks! Guinness has closed many really cool (and difficult) categories like "Eating a Bicycle".
I would like to know everyone's obsession with making things smaller. Some of us like our technology big. It just makes you feel more manly, carrying a suitcase-sized drive around, or putting wheels on your new mp3 player. Where'd I park my SUV? I need to go pick up some more enzyte.
I hate my sig
But I thought my 400kbyte hard drive was the world's smallest.
Yes, yes they will. That's what Guiness is all about, except for the beer thing. What planet are you on? It's a silly little book with lots of silly little "I got mine" thingys. Fun reading, little else.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If the enclure handled hot spares internally and used a third of its drives for redundancy, it would then have 10 levels of failure instead of one. Instead of being 100% or 0% working, it could be any of the nine values between.
This wouldn't be any help for anyone with space for two regular drives, but for a laptop it would be awesome.
...battery capacity. Already they're having trouble with the latest phone/camera/pda/calender/games/java/high res/high color monitor/video recording/video playback/pim/triband/polyphonic/mp3/aac/mms/fm radio/email/browser/bluetooth/gprs/wap/hscsd/touch screen/edge/wcdma/portrait caller id/flashlight/calorie counter/thermometer/picture editor/fax/word processor/excel/ppt viewer/flash player/kitchen sink cell phones (all actual features, tho not in the same phone...)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just out of curiosity, what is the MTBF on these drives (and similarly the iPod) ones and how does it compare with most 3.5" HDDs?
4 Gigs of Pr0n in your watch. Time for nekked womenz.
I believe the storage capacity of a standard coin is 1 bit, heads or tails. Some coins can also be placed on their edge, producing a third result. This is however considered out of spec, and will generally stabilize to one of the two defined states.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
this could bring future to embedded systems, I bet mini-itx fans are squaling with joy with this once.. think of a 600 hard drive raid array...
Hey buddy! Can you spare a gig? I need a place for the site. Have a nice day!
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
the competition to see who had the earliest/smallest bit of technology:
"I had a [sinclair, 128k mac, apple, amiga] with a [subtract one unit from previous post]k hard drive, even after I doubled it in size with [crappy software] I wish I still had it, I'd set it up to run a [web server, distributed computing ap] but for now I guess I will have to be satisfied with running it in emulation mode with my [DR-DOS, OS2, BeOS, DOS 3.1] box!
RAM drive with 3.5" HDD backup. Untouchable seek times. Untouchable transfer rates. Very low failures. Less temperature. Less noise. Much cheaper.
The ______ Agenda
I'm going to fill up the world's tiniest drive with really really small thumbnail sized pr0n!
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Info..
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Wow, you can't read, your 'resume' link doesn't work, and your domain name points to a line of text! Impressive! I'd like to hire you ASAP!
Wouldn't this be perfect for midget pr0n?
Marketing nonsense. Watch it be something like 10-20 megs.
If it's 10+ gigs, then that's impressive.. but by all means, don't (as Toshiba) submit this "hey, we have the smallest hard drive!!!" without giving the storage space.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
A level five RAID marketed by none other than the PEZ Corporation.
Or once they become edible, as the toy surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Just a thought..
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
the world's largest porn collection on the world's smallest drive.
I predict that this record will be broken every 18 months without fail.
peace,
-Grokent
Actually, seek times tend to improve the smaller the disk. It's less mass to move, over a shorter distance. Seagate claims their new 2.5" 10k RPM server-class drive has a 15% faster seek speed than 3.5" drives.
The book The Innovator's Dilemma has a great case study of hard drives, from 14", 8", 5.25", 3.5", 2.5", and beyond and explains why the advantages that each smaller size offers (and why virtually none of the companies that are best at one size manage to sell well into the next smaller size). It's a great book.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I thought that you already can keep more data in your watch than 10 years ago in your Desktop Computer. may not have to be on the smalest HD, but on memory chip - 128 Megs or more. Things are getting smaller every day, someone could make a smaller drive by the time they published the new book! I would understand that they made "Biggest HD" in the world a size of a Yankee Stadium....
What I want to know is: has this Guiness World record holder got enough capacity to store a copy of the Guiness Book of Records ?
I want a simple 5 disk hardware RAID array to put into my old laptop. Has to be use the same IDE interface and look like a single drive to the laptop BIOS. No software/hardware changes necessary.
Anyone know the drop Gs of this drive?
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
The price should be relatively close to that as that is the market they are trying to get into and that is their main competitor contemporarily. It could give us a rough estimate on Toshiba's price.
http://www.cybercom.net/~seishino/specs_header0806 2004.jpg
The ______ Agenda
Well I have been getting some great spam latly, that may just help you small drive.
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
I wouldn't want a hard drive in my watch though. It would drain the battery, and who want spinning metal with magnets over their wrist? Well, maybe magnet nuts, but not I.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I am just wondering if they will have a entry for the longest running windoze machine? A month is a long time for a windoze machine!!
Looks like the World Record Book editors are going down the same path as the US Patent and Trademark Office analysts. Will the madness never cease?
I guess this is what happens when technical artifice crosses over into the mainstream, and becomes celebrity in its own right. I guess we can look forward to the day when there is an annual Moore's Law Award, with its own cute little statue. It would be held in Las Vegas and only prostitutes and Directors of Marketing could attend. Hey, I have some categories;
-- An award for the best increase in CPU performance for devices dissipating under 150W that are not light bulbs.
-- An award for the largest amount of dynamic memory cells per square millimeter on a memory device that never makes it to market.
-- An award for the greatest density of bits stored per surface area on magnetic media in a retail product with a MTBF greater than 10 hours.
-- Lifetime achievement award for the least useful CPU performance metric having the broadest adoption after 5 years.
How depressing.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
The simplest wiring? When one quits they all quit and you spend a day inserting one drive at a time till the system starts and tells you to notify MS since your XP is seeing a change in configuration.
> Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
He did provide me with a laugh.
Only on Slashdot do you see a rather obvious steaming pile of
male cow manure modded +1 Informative
The Machine stops.
Okay perhaps I have a dirty mind, but I thought I should share how my RSS panel showed the headline for this story: "Guiness's World's Smallest Hard D..." Yeah. Don't say you didn't think of it either. :)
"Just a few years ago", a new computer came standard with a 20 megabyte hard drive. The only thing worse than only having 20 megabytes of space is trying to craft a text document in Enable (version 2.15!).
Just trying to be funny, and trying to encourage people to date their references, since "just a few years" in computer technology is vastly different than "just a few years" in the studies of life, the universe and everything.
On my attic I have a drive MUCH smaller.
Its the CBM9060 with a TM601S Drive offering 2,5MB of space. Beat that!
Its a rare version which was build from Spare-Parts, basically a TM602S-drive with a defunct plate.
What, you have been talkin about physical size?
How boring...
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
It was cool when I was a kid in the 70s/80s, but after the internet became the "Compendium of Wierd Knowledge" it seems to lost any meaning. I dout there are many 9-13 year old kids who currently think it's cool when something makes it into the book.
---
Filmo The Klown