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World's Smallest Hard Drive
Rogue_F writes "Always thought your digital camera, or PDA never
had enough storage space for your needs? IBM may
have solved this problem with their new
microdrives.
They may end up being too fragile and expensive, but
just think of the degree of coolness it adds to
something like Itsy
Good things come in little packages
" 340 megs in an inch? Smooth.
I've heard about these in the past. The ad for it was the drive pictured beside a baby chicken. The HD was coming out of a cracked egg. Made me laugh, then made me think about the fragility myself.
Heart, Hands, Honour
pretty cool, so when can this be incorporated in the world's smallest web server?
I work for a company that does business with IBM, and IBM demonstrated one of these drives for us. They claim it is rugged, and very stable. Judging that it is IBM, I would have to agree. They are one of the best storage makers in the world. Looks cool, but it could be the deathnell for flash card makers :(
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Cool, that makes it much easier to put some decent storage on my wearables! Look at the specs on this...17 grams! And PCMCIA compatible. Now if I could just get some decent information on how much current it uses, and how much this is going to cost, I'll be raring to go!
Finding God in a Dog
Searching for the string "340" under IBM articles returns two results (now):
World's Smallest Hard Drive by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 2nd@10:02 7
340MB on 1-inch Square HDD by CmdrTaco on Wednesday September 9th@11:09 44
The more we get away from magnetic media, the better we'll all be. It's just too susceptible to shock/temperature/dirty looks.
--E. Charles Plant
Imagine a whole bunch of these running in a raid system. Good transfer times and low storage cost. Yes, this is old news, but good news none the less.
So, does this mean I can have a RAID 5 array for my laptop?
This is something I'd like in a portable MP3 player. (Assuming of course that the shocks and vibrations won't damage it).
[Science] is one of the very few things that raises human life a little above farce and gives it the grace of tragedy.
My only question.. Since my RIO takes 3.3v CompactFlash memory, can I just stick one of these in? It says that they're compatible with the Compact Flash spec, and that they run on 3.3v..
Sounds good.. 372 MB of MP3s running on a single AA battery.
See press release on their web site.
You could pair up one of these drives with the "matchbox sized webserver" (see /. news last week) and have quite the geek toy.
But, what the hell IS CompactFlash Type II?
According to the RIO manual, it takes Compact Flash memory, is Type II bigger? I see that it has pins, almost like a ribbon cable.
The flash memory standards are horribly confused.
This isn't new. I sent this news to slashdot last year, but it didn't get posted.
These tiny drives should be LESS fragile than the magnetic media you're used to, not MORE. When you make a mechanism smaller, you decrease the amount of stress you can introduce via inertial force, especially when acting on bearings and joints. How much force does it take to break a watch, compared to tipping over a grandfather clock?
Do they really call it "Microdrive"? That may be a trademark violation. This is the REAL Microdrive, from 1983. And if you look at the specs, even if IBM is not violating Sinclair's/Amstrad's trademarks, it may not be a good idea to call their new baby by the same name as a tape drive with a total capacity of 85 KILObytes...
Hard drive will diseapera and be replaced by static memory with 10 ns access time !
none Yet.
For those who are wondering, the CompactFlash interface is just IDE, but smaller. So yes, you could wire one of these to the JumpTec DIMM-PC and put some real storage on a tiny web server.
CompactFlash Types I and II are 3.3 and 5 mm thick respectively, just like PC-MCIA types I and II. You can get PC-MCIA cards which they slot into.
Flash-memory CompactFlash cards come in all sizes up to about 128 MB. Apparently digital cameras usually put a FAT filesystem on their cards.
Just imagine the sounds that can pour of this little annoying creature at last...
This was posted MANY months ago right here on slashdot.
However, being a big PDA user, it is nice to relive it. *grin*. 340MB in a CF form factor will rock with CE 2.11 that plays MP3's. Every CE device will become a RIO!
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
find out that AC was a girl?? Teach me o wise one so that I may hit on all the girls who will be passed by other guys :-)
Remember 1st generation Star Trek, where people on the ship would hand each other little orange plastic rectangles and say, "Here's the data on the reptile beings of Satyricon IV."? Admittedly, you'd think the Enterprise would have enough networking to avoid "sneaker-net" entirely. I wonder if these drives are the precursor to that. Note to IBM marketing: Use bright colors!
Finally, I fell in a heap on the ground. I've no idea who left it there.
--Neddie Segoon [Harry Secombe], The Goons: "Dishonoured"
Gracias, almost missed that peace of info, pretty cool.
The flash memory used by the Rio is compact only in that it is small, not that it conforms to the CompactFlash specification.
I made the same mistake when I bought mine, but I can't return it now...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Think of the possibilities:
Calculators
Watches
A Mouse that can boot Linux
etc...
Eh?
(And the QL - remember that?)
Of course, Sinclair Microdrives were based on tape technology, and the cartriges were always breaking, and only stored a few hundred K if I remember rightly.... Guess Sinclair never trademarked the name? Although I note that IBM doesn't call them Microdrives(TM). Hmmm.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
That's Relativity. -Einstein
This was posted **ON SLASHDOT** many moons ago. Is this some sort of a recap for newcomers? Really cool stuff though.
--SONET
You might have noticed from the press release that the actual product was NOT shipping. This thing hadn't yet hit the shelves. I would not be suprised if you could now BUY these devices direct from IBM, or in a little while, through one of their distributors. In the original press release IBM was stating that they wouldn't be released till about mid-1999. Mebbe they finished early? Who knows...
Still, I know I want one. With a CF-II adaptor for PCMCIA, it's a great way to swap data between a camera and a notebook/PC with PCMCIA adaptor. Now mebbe we'll see some REAL digital cameras (more like traditional SLR's) than the shite we see from Kodak and the like currently. (Give me 10000 by 8000 pixels PLEASE, and a REAL zoom, not this digital crap!)
Imagine about 30 (10 x 3) of those, packed tighly together inside the volume of an existing 3 and a half hard
disk (you probably need to concentrate all the logic parts somewhere)
and maybe:
- all simultanious access
- use one or two as a redundant storage
- using only one scsi connector/address
doesn't sounds bad at all !
oh, wel probably won't need it anyway.
Ernest J.W. ter Kuile
Posted by LOTHAR, of the Hill People:
:)
CompactFlash II has the same footprint 1" x 1"
but is thicker(about 5.6mm).
If youre handy with a soldering iron you could swap out the connectors but I wouldnt recommend it