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Technology

1.5GB HDs On a 1" Platter 239

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pr0n-on-the-road dept.
darthv506 was among several to point out a Cnet story describing a new "1.5GB HD on a 1" Platter. Samsung is releasing a sub 600 buck video camera that is "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes" featuring the drive. The drive is actually in production, and apparently goes for $65 in volume.
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1.5GB HDs On a 1" Platter More

1.5GB HDs On a 1" Platter

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  • Radio-TiVo? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sweeney37 ( 325921 ) * <mikesweeney@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:47AM (#6105044) Homepage Journal
    This seem to be the perfect size (capacity and physical) for a Radio Tivo project...

    Mike
    • I don't know, when I saw this I immediately thought portable mp3 player, and one of the reasons I want to get an mp3 player is to now listen to the radio...

      • Re:Radio-TiVo? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Surak ( 18578 ) * <surakNO@SPAMmailblocks.com> on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:58AM (#6105129) Homepage Journal
        Not necessarily for music. Sometimes you want to be able to listen to other kinds of radio programs. For instance, where I work, I can't seem to get NPR to tune in very well, so I can't exactly listen to some NPR programming that goes on during the day. But with a TiVo-like system for radio, I could *record* those NPR programs *at home* (where the reception is perfectly fine) and play them back later. Of course, this also means that I can listen to the day programs better at home, and give it my more-or-less undivided attention.

        Another application would be live audio recording. Take your portable radio TiVo thing and add a mic and boom -- live recording of concerts (if you can sneak it in of course ;), or audio security, or set it up in a friend's apartment and spy on them. ;)

        • it makes it easier to record a meeting with a person to cover your ass...just make like you are checking your time and turn it on >:-)

        • Re:Radio-TiVo? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Obiwan Kenobi ( 32807 ) *
          Listen online. Most npr stations have online listening capabilities (Realplayer and Quicktime, respectively, usually both).

          Here's one [wnyc.org], here's mine [wuot.org], and here's one more [wbez.org].

          • Re:Radio-TiVo? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by ayden ( 126539 )
            Listen online.

            Try listening online while driving or jogging.

            People who want Radio-TiVo want all the same conveniences that you get with an ordinary MP3/Ogg player PLUS TIME SHIFTING of Radio Content.

            We want something that will automatically record a program - AM/FM, online, whatever - and have the convenience taking that recording with us.
          • Unfortunately, neither are standards, so I can't play them. When they get to some MP3 or Vorbis streaming, let me know.

        • Re:Radio-TiVo? (Score:5, Funny)

          by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:37AM (#6105402) Journal
          or set it up in a friend's apartment and spy on them

          Wow, someone who is taking Ashcroft's advice seriously.

        • Re:Radio-TiVo? (Score:3, Informative)

          by missing000 ( 602285 )
          If they are NPR news shows you can download [npr.org] any of them for free already.

          If the show is syndicated and not available online for free, you really should just ante-up and buy tapes to support it don't you think?

        • Re:Radio-TiVo? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Triv ( 181010 ) *
          YOu can do this now (sort of) with an audible.com [audible.com] account - download individual shows and listen to them on an mp3 player, or burn them to CD. They currently offer This American Life and Fresh Air (AFAIK, there may be more). Give it a look.

          Triv
        • OZradio is a Linux FM radio player for KDE and GNOME. It supports BTTV-compatible FM and TV cards. It features the ability to save up to 10 preset stations, a sound mixer, volume control, a mute button, automatic frequency scanning, on-demand recording and replay of radio, and programmable recording.

          Looks like OZradio [sourceforge.net] should work and witht he money you save you can get a nice player to listen with.
        • In fact, if you're listening to NPR right now, and you haven't donated, you are a thief.

          http://www.rockstargames.com/vicecity/ [rockstargames.com]
      • Already exists since the 1st of june 2003 when ARCHOS [archos.com] offcialy launched the new AV300 series :

        mp3, divx, photos, camera, video shoot & playback, tv recorder & playback, radio, speech/radio/mp3 recorder (some need modules), 3.8 inches screen, USB2/Firewire for a "few" 800 buck.

        oh... forgot, it's 20Gb and 40Go in a few months.

        Not yet in stores however or already in shortage ? ;)
        • Already exists since the 1st of june 2003 when ARCHOS offcialy launched the new AV300 series :

          Yeah and it weighs a ton. You would not want to have an archos device built into a set of noise cancelling headphones. This drive should be lightweight enough to do that. 20Gb or 40Gb is not that big a deal, I find the critical size threshold is about 1Gb, thats the point at which I can get a decent selection of CDs on the device, enough for a plane trip. It is nice to be able to hold a complete collection of CD

          • I have a Nikon Coolpix 4500 with a 1GB Microdrive in it, and I've had >300 shots from a single battery before now. (full capacity for a 1GB MD is ~580 shots)
            No idea how that would compare to a 1GB flash card, but I figure you might have use for the information.
    • Yeah, that would be cool. Or, you could just buy this:

      http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=139 4& showComments=true

      It's an app that works like Tivo for the radio.
    • There's a company called radiotime working on something like this. Don't know if they are doing the hardware, but they are working on cataloging of radio sites. You should be able to choose the programs you want, and download on to your portable mp3 player, and also time-shift it to whenever you want.
    • One of the key things about TiVo and the like, is that you can get program listings. I am unaware of any such listing for the radio containing info on what station has what program when.

  • Let's hope they learner thier lesson... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:48AM (#6105046)
    Some of Cornice's employees came from Dataplay, a once-promising mini-disc start-up.

    Hopefully, they've figured out what went wrong there and will be more sucessful this time around...

    Though a camera that you can't upgrade storage for (they talk about embedding the HD in products), I'm not so sure about. 1.5GB might be enough for most people, however that comes just as 4 and 5 MP cameras are becoming popular and will probably make 1.5gb seem a bit small!

    • Re:Let's hope they learner thier lesson... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lord Kholdan ( 670731 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:51AM (#6105069)
      So what? you can't upgrade the pixel amount either so it wont matter. When 4 and 5 MP cameras are out, they might very well have a larger HD out too.
      • My co-worker is looking at cameras now, and is deciding between 4 and 5 MP today.

        My real point was that these cameras are all non-upgradable. The only other kind of cameras like that are disposable cameras (actually, this is awesome for the disposable digital cameras). I'm just not sure people want a camera that you can't add "film" to...

        Then again, perhaps convenience of the whole thing will win people over.
    • The whole point as they pointed out was the price of the HD. By soldering the thing right on the mobo, they've reduced on actual components (such as screws etc). That's why it's so cheap. That's why it's so good.

      I personally can't wait to get a wristwatch sized mp3 player. MMMmmmmmm...

  • Uh oh (Score:4, Funny)

    by scovetta ( 632629 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:51AM (#6105065) Homepage
    I think I lost my hard drive in my pocket!

    This seems to be great, as long as they're more reliable than Maxtors [slashdot.org].

  • Longmont Colorado... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:51AM (#6105067)
    seems to have had HDD 'startups' since Hector was a pup. Maxtor is there, Seagate has/had a plant there, upptey-dump others as well. What is it about Longmont? Do the same people just hop from company to company, recycling their skills with each new startup, persevering as each one cycles through some form of bankruptcy and renewal?

  • RTFA (Score:2, Informative)

    by joe630 ( 164135 )
    The story says it is a 5GB drive on a 1.5" platter. Maybe posters should read the article.

  • Surface Mount (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rosonowski ( 250492 ) <rosonowski&gmail,com> on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:56AM (#6105109)
    It says that the drive is missing rails and is surface mounted. Does this mean it is lacking in some sort of shell? If so, it would make the drives severely lacking in upgrade possibilities.

    • Re:Surface Mount (Score:2, Informative)

      by confused one ( 671304 )
      It's surface mount, i.e. fixed, i.e. non-removable (unless mounted in a compact flash sized shell). It's got a minimalistic shell to reduce price --that's the point; it can be installed in cheap cameras.
  • hm...

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/15/1514 24 6&mode=nested&tid=137

  • This is the kind of technology that should be used for portable mp3 players. Nobody needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket. I don't even have that much music. I would seriously like to see this technology make a small mp3 solution with adequate storage cost effective for everyone. The only current things on the market seem to be the ultra expensive ala iPod, or inadequate storage capacity ala solid state memory players. This could be the solution i'm sure we're all looking for.

    • Re:Please use this for an MP3 player (Score:4, Funny)

      by fussman ( 607784 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:02AM (#6105157) Journal
      Nobody needs to carry 20 gigs of music around in their pocket. I don't even have that much music.

      Well I do!
      Long live P2P!

    • No, some people have plenty. I've got well over 160 hours of legal CDs (and not the largest CD collection I know, either) and so we're talking well into multiple gigabytes at different bitrates. The big players mean that I can listen to it all at work without dragging round piles of media.
    • Please. I easily have more than 15 GB of legal MP3s, most of which are on my 20GB Archos. For someone who is serious about music, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a market for >100GB MP3 players.

      And I do listen to all my music. I have diverse tastes, and it might be a while before I listen to one particular song again, but I do eventually listen to all the music.

      Granted my music consuming habits are probably not representative of the general public, but then I think most people use MP3 players
    • I have 120 CDs of (legally purchased) CDDA which at 320kbps mp3 encoding (which is the bitrate at which I rip all my mp3s) will only barely fit inside of 20GB if at all. (Seems to be about 6:1, I haven't done any high-tech studies.)

      20GB of mp3s is a pittance. A tiny scratch on the average mp3 collection of someone with broadband internet access and a lot of time on their hands and a CD burner.

    • Yes, so everybody has terabytes worth of music at home. But the point being, that you do not really need to take this music with you. I don't see everyone with a discman carrying around 100 cd's. If you're going for a jog, you'd only need maybe 1 hour worth of music. Hell, with a gig or so worth of mp3's you could easily complete an ironman triathlon without hearing the same song twice.

      For at home, I can understand having 40 gigs worth of mp3's, but for on the go, it's hardly necessary.
    • This is the kind of technology that should be used for portable mp3 players.

      If you want an MP3 player you have to replace if you drop it or if the pocket it is in gets banged against a wall or...

      Flash mm cards are now cheap enough for me to be able to carry half a dozen 64mb cards with me, each holding about an album. That's enough for me. The extra space doesn't seem worth going to something mechanical.

  • Gigs ang gigs.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:58AM (#6105128) Homepage Journal

    Serious question: Why don't they go back to 5.25" full height drives with many platters for archival purposes? The speed would likely suck as the heads would need to move a lot from inner to outer edges but the capacity could be huge..

    • Re:Gigs ang gigs.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:15AM (#6105240)
      Remember the BigFoot series of hard drive? They were 5.25" drives by Quantum (now Maxtor) for desktop use. The problem is that when you make the disc wider, you have to slow down the rotation to keep the platters from breaking or 'stretching'. You'd have to run the things at 5400 RPM _AND_ a 'front to back' head seek would take forever. These would be GREAT as backup-only drives, but companies that buy backupd drives now are willing to pay $BIG_MONEY for backup drives (the bank I work at uses 36GB 10K U160-SCSI for server archives). There's really no market for cheap slow drives that hold oodles of data, they exist and don't sell well. Also, they'd end up in low-end PCs for sure, your uncle's eMachine would CRAWL with one of these.

    • Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:19AM (#6105280) Homepage
      The gb/volume ratio wouldn't be much better

      You'd need to create 5 1/4" platters for a *very* small market.

      You can change a failed disk in an array much easier than a failed platter inside a hermetically sealed HDD.

      Size = IDE (RAID)
      Speed = SCSI (RAID)
      Really fucking huge? Not sure. Big array? Tape robot? Fibre SCSI?

      However, considering you can fit 1TB (4x250gb WD drives) in a desktop now, I don't see that many needing it...

      Kjella
    • Quantium actually took this approach I believe with their bigfoot series of drives (aka the slowfoot). Though it wasn't a full hight 5.25 inch drive... but it was an early on the market 8gig drive roughly 1/3 hight. Not too speddy, but pretty reliable and can take much in the way of impact and still fuction.

      I know compaq used that in one of their computers. I can't remember the designation but it was an odd duck, black short desktop with speakers designed for multi-media on board amp but slow cpu and on
    • "Serious question: Why don't they go back to 5.25" full height drives with many platters for archival purposes? The speed would likely suck as the heads would need to move a lot from inner to outer edges but the capacity could be huge.."

      It might work. My idea is that you would would have a big brick like this 5.25" HDD in your backpack holding 120 GB or whatnot and then as your camera snaps pictures, they get sent to that drive by bluetooth. This way you can have a tiny and light camera with still a lot

  • These drives aren't meant to be removed from the device they are installed in, so data transfer is limited to firewire. I'd prefer a MicroDrive. It can be removed and used as a removable drive by any device with a Compact Flash reader. Much more useful, and supposedly a 4GB version is available later this year. This item will be used only in low end products where price outweighs features. Any device I can think of that can store that much data, eventually you'd want to be able to transfer it somewhere

    • Re:Data Transfer will be the bottleneck (Score:5, Informative)

      by altman ( 2944 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:15AM (#6105245) Homepage
      Erm, no.

      USB2.0 or Firewire both have plenty enough bandwidth to saturate the drive. Cornice drives manage well excess of 3MBytes/sec in my experience (I work for Rio), which is faster than I've ever seen from my 1GB microdrive plugged into a PCMCIA-CF adaptor.

      Remember USB2.0/Firewire can support up to in excess of 30MBytes/sec. This is faster than a CF interface can manage - CF doesn't have DMA capability.

      Hugo
      • Cool, I stand corrected on throughput. I still prefer the convenience of being able to remove the drive and use it on another machine, or being able to upgrade capacity at a later date.
        • It's a design tradeoff.

          Embedding a hard drive means you can make certain design decisions: Smaller packaging, less connectors, less silicon, certain shapes and configurations, and manufacturing decisions.

          The issue is also utility... The idea that Moore's law might make the object in question obsolete by the time you get around to upgrading the capcity, or that if not obsolete, upgrading the capcity makes less sense than getting a new device with new features and new capabilities.

          We aren't talking general
      • The CF2 spec [compactflash.org] rates the interface up to 16MB/s, which is half of the USB2/Firewire spec, but is much faster than the 3MB/s that you report for the Cornice drives. CNet [netscape.com] reports transfer rates of 13.3Mbps for IBM's 1GB MicroDrive, which is about 1.5MB/s -- about half that of the Cornice drives. So, it looks as if the CF interface won't be a bottleneck for the drives, for a while, at least.

        I'd say that the fact that the Cornice drives don't use a standard interface is a serious limitation, since it doesn't

    • > These drives aren't meant to be removed from the device they are installed in, so data transfer is limited to firewire.

      Since when is firewire really limiting? Sure it's not as fast as SATA but it's more than fast enough to transfer files or even copy DV video at a rate greater than 1x.

      > It can be removed and used as a removable drive by any device with a Compact Flash reader.

      Compact Flash is a lot slower than firewire if i'm not mistaken... I could look it up, but I'd just stick with my general

      • CompactFlash is basically ATA with a small connector, so you're mistaken.

      • Compact Flash is a lot slower than firewire if i'm not mistaken... I could look it up, but I'd just stick with my general experience and the fact that half of the CF readers i've used were USB... so I really don't understand your point.

        The CF reader I use most is a PCMCIA reader in my laptop. True, most CF readers are USB, so those are a wash as far as speed. Most of my use of CF has been a digital camera, and I much prefer accessing the individual files directly rather than rely on the camera's USB tr

  • how big? (Score:4, Funny)

    by RobertTaylor ( 444958 ) <roberttaylor1234 ... com minus distro> on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @09:59AM (#6105135) Homepage Journal
    "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes"

    That those big giant cigarettes packets like these? [essentialaction.org]

  • News? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Groote Ka ( 574299 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:08AM (#6105194)
    I thought I've read this before a few days ago... here [nikkeibp.com].

    Well, nevermind. Funny to see that about seven to eigth years ago, everyone thought that HDDs had come to an end and that storage capacity per square centimeters is increasing even faster than Moore's Law.

    Probably, HDDs will win over Flash as new IC processing technologies are getting exponentially expensive and HDD more and more power concious.

    I should have studied magnetics instead of IC processing.

    • I should have studied magnetics instead of IC processing.

      dont worry you will have your day, there are alarming indications that the magnetic media is coming to an end as a concept, for one IBM sold its hard disk unit [internetnews.com] bet you that they have something big coming, and things like this [itworld.com] (read the last paragraph).

      personally I think that in the future you will buy a daily snapshot of the internet stored on a 1"x1"x1" cube instead of surfing, and you will only need a connection only for email and live events.

  • A video camera seems like an odd fit. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:10AM (#6105206)
    I like the price and the size, but a camcorder seems like a weird place to use this -- unless it was just cheap enough to say "what the heck?" and go ahead, which'd be a really good sign for this drive.

    A disk with 1.5 GB doesn't compete with DV tapes at all, so it can't be for the video. This is just replacing a flash card in that "cigarette pack"-sized camera to store stills you take along the way? Is this camcorder going to take stills much above 1.5MP? That's what the decent consumer camcorders that take stills are at -- and this one's a $600 camcorder, so it can't be that great. It'd take a looong while to fill 1.5 GB at that resolution.

    • is the intent of the 1.5 GB drive in the camcorder. Said camcorder also uses Memory Stick media for storing stills...

    • I work at Circuit City and I just sold a lady a higher end Sony 1MP MiniDV camcorder today for $799. The memory stick that was included was 8 MB, so this would be a bit of a step up. Still, if you're buying something for stills, you don't want a 1 MP camera.

      So, yeah, with 14fps and 1MP each, you're looking at about 3 minutes and 15 seconds of record time, if I didn't drop a zero somewhere. Not too great, is it?

  • Better laptops (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:10AM (#6105208) Homepage

    Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.

    Even PDAs will benefit, since some people that are now using microdrives with PCMCIA cards see the battery go down in 2 hours or less.

    I would buy a video camera that can save to removeable drives like these after a DivX or XVid encoding, even at a higher pricetag.

    • Re:Better laptops (Score:4, Interesting)

      by horza ( 87255 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @11:38AM (#6105957) Homepage
      Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.

      It would be a good complement to the main hard drive. You could put the OS (along with /swap and cache dirs) on the small hard drive, and let the main drive spin down for 99% of the time.

      Phillip.
      • Subsequent versions could go up to 4GB or even 8. None of my Linux installations along with DB2, oracle, websphere, KDE3, unreal tournament and quake2 etc have taken over 4GBs. A one-drive laptop could still sell.

        And then, they could plop in 4 of these SCSI drives in one laptop. The price will go up but only one drive at a time would be used, still a saving.
  • That's all fine and dandy, but what about those of us who want... oh I dunno, 9998 or 9999 less? I think a helluva a lot of ppl will want to know how much it'll cost at the retail level.
    • As the article notes, it won't be sold at the retail level. The drive is specifically designed to be a component designed into a board, and not replacable. I suppose if you want to do your own soldering and surface mount, you could use just one, but that's not much of a market.
  • Will there ever be a NVRAM camcorder? Flash is getting cheaper every day. And camcorders are ususlly subject to vibrations and shock. Seems like a HDD would lead to problems.

  • Wait, has anyone seen the new Ipods? They're LESS than an inch thick, and can store up to 30 GB on them! What's the big hurrah about these things??
  • That's great news for the hidden camera 'voyeur' pr0n fetish.

    I can fit 6 in the bathroom, and she'll never even notice.

  • Obligatory Linux Comment... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OmniGeek ( 72743 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:39AM (#6105413)
    Gee, can we boot Linux on it?

    But Seriously, Folks, this kind of storage addresses one of the major problems with memory stick-based still cameras: too much $, too few pictures. Say that a camera with this disk only stores 100 or so 10 MByte pictures and then needs a few minutes to D/L them to a bigger box via USB; that STILL compares well with film cameras (36-exposure rolls), and is MUCH more convenient than a CD-R on the back of the camera (seen'em, not impressed, they're bulkier than my SLR and have no interchangeable lenses). And it's inexpensive. Nice engineering job, great toy!
    • I don't think the average consumer wants to be able to take 10MByte pictures. Most people I know with digital cameras don't really understand resolution very well anyway. For most people, 128MB flash memory is probably sufficient for a 3Megapixel camera storing JPeg images. Remember, most people want to be able to e-mail a picture in reasonable time over a dial up modem.

      Where these HD's will really be interesting would be in palm pilots, camcorders, and MP3 players.
    • Gee, can we boot Linux on it?

      It's big enough, but they embedded it according to comments above. You might do better looking for an old 1G IBM CF microdrive.

      The news is that they are selling them on their own for under $65. Sure, you can run Linux off of that! I'm hoping to see reasonably priced CF microdrives soon. CF fits my camera, zaurus and laptop and is the next best thing to networking them.

  • Coincidentally (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jonsey ( 593310 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @10:49AM (#6105485) Journal
    Samsung is releasing a sub 600 buck video camera that is "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes"

    Smaller, and cheaper too!

  • Drive Failures? (Score:3)

    by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodeka&gmail,com> on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @11:01AM (#6105586) Homepage
    Energy savings
    Density also will increase, Magenis said. Along with stripping out parts, the company has worked on engineering issues such as keeping energy consumption down. The RCA device will be able to run 12 hours on a single battery charge because the drive's motor shuts down between tasks, Magenis said. Shock-absorbing materials in the drive case will allow devices to sustain the shock from a 1-meter drop, he added.

    Won't that be a bit taxing on the motor itself?
  • Gosh, in MiniDV format, that's 4.5 minutes of video+audio per GB, so this camera would hold, uh, complicated calculation, wait for it, um, WOW! 6.75 whole minutes of footage! Incredible! (Maybe they could gang 10 of these drives into one unit to equal one standard MiniDV tape)

    Oh, but wait, there are idiots plan to use MPEG type compression in-camera because they plan to never edit their footage. I know how we all love to sit through hours of unedited tape! Thrilling!

  • The New Samsung Camcorder (Score:5, Informative)

    by nherc ( 530930 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @11:06AM (#6105632) Journal
    The ITCAM-7 is pretty slick actual... tiny, cheap and it uses MPEG4 (there's a pic of it here as well). [camcorderinfo.com]

    Some specs:

    • Camcorder: MPEG4, 1.5 or 3 Mbps, VGA (640x480)
    • Digital camera (JPEG, 640x480)
    • MP3 player
    • Audio recorder
    • Data storage
    • Webcam
    • Lens: Optical 10x zoom
    • CCD: 350K pixels
    • LCD: 2.0" LCD, 211K pixels
    • Storage: 1.5 GB HDD, Memory stick
    • Recording time: 66min in "Super Fine" mode
    • Interface: USB 2.0
    • Size: 64mm x 33.5mm x 103mm (about the size of a thick calculator)
    • Weight: 185g

  • smalle! cheaper! better ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by noselasd ( 594905 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @11:09AM (#6105654)
    Lots of fuzz about cheap'n'small drives. Ok, how good are they ?
    Are they reliable ? For years ?
    I'd rather have a big 20Gb@$200 disk that lasts for atleast 7 years,
    than a small cheap 200Gb$50 that might do down the drain in half a year.

    --
    http://osxonintel.xoverzero.com - sign the petition!
  • Hitachi announced a 4GB Microdrive [mobilemag.com] (one inch) earlier this year.

    The differences between these two products:
    • Hitachi is more expensive, more parts, requires more power
    • Cornice is more 'dumb', less capacity, smaller (mounted to PCB) and non-removable
    So they each have their advantages. I don't know if I could be satisfied with being unable to 'change tapes' in my camcorder - it probably takes on the order of minutes to transfer from the camera to a computer or other storage device, and I doubt the drive has enough throughput and a low enough seek time to allow both high speed recording and high speed reading which would allow me to offload portions of the data while still recording.

    But not owning a camcorder I don't know what the usage patterns typically are. I imagine that most days it's used it isn't used for more than an hour throughout the whole day. At this point the MPEG4 encoder may require more power then the HD, which means that a very small li-ion polymer battery will last through the entire drive.

    -Adam

  • only evolutionary not revolutionary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @12:34PM (#6106487)
    we have had ibm 1 gb 1" hd for ages. in that sense 1.5 gb 1" is only an evolutionary. however, the price point may be little attractive. at $65, it would compete with 512 MB compactflash.

    samsung video camera using 1.5 gb hd is less interesting in a sense that they don't have comparable optical and video quality specs and if you take history as a reference, it will be a mediocre camcorder. panasonic is working on pro level camcorder with 6 CF cards, each upto 4 GB. a consumer version of this may be more interesting.

    hitachi, which took over ibm microdive, plans to make 4 gb version before the end of the year. if they can make price down, it might succeed.

    microdrive had only a partial success in the beginning when CF was very expensive. today, it looks like a solution in need of a problem. for mp3, the 1.8" factor is good enough (e.g. iPod) where you can get upto 30 gb. for cameras, you need lot more reliability that many people are dissatisfied with microdrives. for pda, 512 MB CF is more than enough. for camcorders, tapes provide reliability; dvd based camcorder provides direct archive and micro-dv (Sony) provide compactness. as much as i like the technology, i don't see where to fit it.

  • Wow! That's... not big enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by phallen ( 145919 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2003 @12:36PM (#6106511) Homepage
    I'd be impressed if it was 3+GB, but 1.5? Use 1GB compact flash or some other form of solid state. It's heading towards 2GB soon, most likely. Who want's moving parts?

    But that said, it does seem likely the capacity of these little suckers will go up, way faster than Flash, so it'll be worth it soon. But 1.5GB? It's too late to be impressive, kinda like... Don't make me say it.... Zip GIZZMO DRIVE! Remember when those seemed big?

  • A preceeding article [nikkeibp.com] mentions the 2.4 Gb Magicstor already in production with 3.6 Gb on target this year and 4.7 next year. The same article predicts that 0.7 inches will be the next big standard if some barriers are passed.

    If Cornice or some other company bought Ritek's Microstor [dpreview.com] is unkown to me (it seems to have been related to dataplay developers too) but it's clear that there is a shortage of good brand names for this product. The Press release for Magicstor was hilarious, promptly stating that the

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