Guinness's World's Smallest Hard Drive Record 244
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". "
Guiness has no idea.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:2)
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:4, Informative)
I think largest screen and fastest processor (in MIPS not Hz) are already listed.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:3, Informative)
From the 2002 GBRW UK edition p.168 (I don't know if all countries have the same content):
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:2)
=Brian
Get a clue (Score:2)
Re:Get a clue (Score:2, Funny)
now that is one heck of a good question - so you don't know, either? I feel better already...
apart from that, exactly why is this news on /.? the drive itself has already been covered here, and as you say, theres little a geek could get out of the guinness book. their beer is ok, but that's about it.
Re:Get a clue (Score:2)
Re:Get a clue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
An apprpriate distinction for GBWR:
Toshiba Claims First Harddrive to Float on the Head of a Guiness
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:3, Funny)
If I manage to make a spinning media HD of the same physical size but it holds more data does it get marked down as "smallest" or "largest" or "largest smallest"?
If I'm driving the speed of light and turn on my headlights do I get "fastest car", "slowest light" or most "expensive ticket"?
TW
Re:Guiness has no idea.... (Score:2)
which they claim makes them the new capacity king
Emphasis mine.
At last.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:At last.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:At last.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:At last.... (Score:3, Funny)
You know you're a geek if... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know you're a geek if... (Score:5, Funny)
As I'm in the UK, I thought "they have very big coins in the US don't they?"
Re:You know you're a geek if... (Score:4, Funny)
Huh? Where's it go? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? Where's it go? (Score:2)
Adorable (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure why, but it just seems adorable in a little puppy dog kind of way.
Re:Adorable (Score:2)
-B
Odd (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Odd (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Odd (Score:2)
who hit me on my backhead?
Re:Odd (Score:2, Funny)
Computer parts get better all the time; thus, they can publish "Guiness '04", and then push "Guiness '05" as an essential upgrade two years later.
BSOD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:BSOD (Score:4, Funny)
Re:BSOD (Score:2)
Already... (Score:4, Insightful)
YES (Score:2, Funny)
Re:YES (Score:3, Funny)
The real problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kjella
Re:The real problem is... (Score:2)
Camera: Common now, battery life is killed by it (not mine!)
PDA: Very rudimentary, and it's almost needed for contact management. Mine has that, but there's no substitute for a Palm (except another true standalone PDA or one that was a cell wrapped around a PDA, but those are poor cells).
Calendar: Mine has it, but it barely hits battery life.
Games: Not much battery life hit - Java doesn't need that much, and the Nokia games seem to be f
So who will be the first....... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So who will be the first....... (Score:2)
What a let down... (Score:4, Funny)
(Offtopic +1, Beer)
Re:What a let down... (Score:2)
As they are the sponsors... (Score:3, Informative)
Info.. [guinnessworldrecords.com]
Tm
Re:What a let down... (Score:2)
Re:What a let down... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a let down... (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry. Forgot my Gaelic roots.
(for others not versed in Irish history - St. Patrick is actually St. Paidrig in the local Gaelic language, so the abbreviation should be St. Paddy not St. Patty)
Re:What a let down... (Score:2)
Re:What a let down... (Score:2)
Re:What a let down... (Score:2)
That's actually the reason for the imbibing of beer on this holiday: to ensure proper enunciation of the day's name.
Alcohol: Cause of--and solution to--all of life's problems.
m-
Re:What a let down... (Score:2)
OMG! Is there anything beer can't cure?
Smallest Drive (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Smallest Drive (Score:5, Funny)
Being about the size of a quarter, wouldn't it be 2 bits?
Quarter storage capacity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Smallest Drive (Score:2)
Except in Florida where it would probably be about 16 bits as they have to keep recounting them and lose track of them after a while.
Re:Smallest Drive (Score:2)
Re:Smallest Drive (Score:5, Funny)
Which is what you need to encode all possibilites of getting a shave and/or haircut, coincidentally enough.
great.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:great.. (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine a ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Imagine a ... (Score:2)
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)
Re:Imagine a ... (Score:5, Interesting)
- I don't think the seek time is necessarily all that great. The actuator is also minaturized and the precision of movement required is likely higher than a normal hard disk.
- The overhead, in processor time in the controller and accounting on the disks themselves, involved in a 30-way RAID configuration would be enormous and probably well above the point of diminishing returns.
These things really are designed for applications where space is a premium; you could get orders of magnitude more space for the same cost or less with physically larger disks.seek times & a book recomendation (Score:4, Informative)
The book The Innovator's Dilemma [businessweek.com] 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.
Re:Imagine a ... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's 800 gigs per 1u assuming 4gb per disk, and that's not even considering the additional 29 inches (or so) of depth you'd have in the case. Which from a density perspective is pretty close to what already exists.. you can easily get 4 terabyte in a 3 unit chassis these days.
I wouldn't envy the poor engineer that would have to design the wiring for such a setup however, not to mention dealing with pesky details like swapping out bad disks and heat dissipation.
Re:Imagine a ... (Score:2)
Re:Imagine a ... (Score:2)
A quarter is about 0.06 of an inch thick, so I just rounded up to an easily divisible number. Obviously that's a very optimistic guess, but then again, discussing putting 200 4gb drives into a chassis and using raid on them is already stretching the limits of plausibility so I figured why not.
Imagine a ... (Score:2)
Or how about.... (Score:2)
Reliability? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Reliability? (Score:2)
Re:Reliability? (Score:2)
but... (Score:2)
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....
Re:but... (Score:2)
I miss the bar bets. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [sptimes.com].
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?
Good for mp3 players (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good for mp3 players (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good for mp3 players (Score:2)
Re:Good for mp3 players (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good for mp3 players (Score:2)
and also about keeping it cheaper that the regular ipods.
The next wave is comming (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The next wave is comming (Score:2)
Worst teeth... Oldest Shoes... Largest number of days between sunlight... Most frequent use of the word "l337..."
I win! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I win! (Score:2)
Wristwatch pr0n! (Score:2, Funny)
Wait, no, I can sure watch it, but I certainly won't be able to use it!!!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
A Day Early? (Score:5, Funny)
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, ..):
Re:A Day Early? (Score:2)
Re:A Day Early? (Score:2)
NO ONE expects the spanish requisition
Not actually innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not actually innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
The drive itself may not be an innovation, but the manufacturing processes required to make it certainly are.
Re:Not actually innovation (Score:2)
I think it goes to show that we live in a society where an idea pales in importance to the execution of the idea.
Now what we need are camera watches. (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Guinness has been duped! (Score:3, Funny)
Guinness is the new Moore's Law bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
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 plan on... (Score:5, Funny)
e.
How much can it store? Otherwise... big deal. (Score:2)
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.
Re:How much can it store? Otherwise... big deal. (Score:2)
Article 1, Me 0. I will return.
I can see it now... (Score:2)
Or once they become edible, as the toy surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks.
Has it got enough capacilty ? (Score:2)
Re:Impressive! (Score:2)
Slashdot "one upping" Mad libs-- (Score:3, Funny)
"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!
Re:Not a troll - basic physical chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)
There are no such things as those elements to which you refer, and Anser albifrons is the scientific name for the White-fronted goose (which, by the way, lives nowhere near Greece, as it is a native of the northern Americas, concentrated around Alaska and Greenland where it breeds and migrating down to Texas).
Considering these facts, and the otherwise content-free nature of your post, I think a troll moderation was kind.
Thanks for playing, better luck next time.