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Technology

5GB Hard Disk On A PCMCIA Type II Card 136

Posted by timothy from the better-than-secret-microfiche dept.
chopkins1 writes: "Toshiba has managed to squeeze 5GB of storage space into a PCMCIA Type II SAN disk. I'll take this over a Sony Memory Stick any day. Faster storage and faster copy to and from a computer. Considering that I'm about to get a camcorder that supports both, I think my decision is made (128M Memory Stick for $240US or Toshiba 5G for $400US), I'm going for the Type II card." As the article points out, that's more than typical DVD.
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5GB Hard Disk On A PCMCIA Type II Card More

5GB Hard Disk On A PCMCIA Type II Card

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  • PCMCIA Type II SAN disk? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What does "SAN" mean in that context? I'm assuming the poster didn't mean Storage Area Network.

  • Re:"more than typical DVD" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    DVD R Drive - $700
    DVD R disk - $25
    total : $725. and it isnt portable.
    This one blows it away.
  • The SAN disk is flash, without a rotating disk. See? Il est "sans disc"; Without a disk.

  • Almost enough for still photography (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is progress. The big question for me is, will it work in a Nikon professional digital SLR [nikonusa.com]? (The Nikon D series has a PCMCIA slot but has 'issues' with the IBM micro drive and thus possibly with this one as well). And 5GB is almost enough. Yes, I'm not kidding: from a typical 2 month trip I come back with 50 rolls of film, or about ~1500 pix. Even assuming the instant feedback of digital allows me to avoid bracketing and taking redundant or spec shots, I'm still going to have about 1000 pictures. And lossy compression is not an option, so I'm still not going to be able to fit all of them on a single drive. But it's getting close. Of course other issues are still a problem: power draw and impact damage. My film camera typically needs one set of 4 Li AA's per trip; I suspect that using this thing in a digital camera is going to require multiple recharging stops per day (assuming I can find (a) and outlet and (b) a plug adaptor) or a lot of extra batteries. And while rolls of film have to be protected, I currently don't have to worry when my pack full of film gets thrown off the roof of a bus in Kyrgyzstan.

  • FALSE! Caching invaluable for realtime writing. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 16, 2001 @06:33PM (#80920)
    cache is only useful when you're re-reading/re-writing the same (relatively small) regions over and over

    Consider real time video capture. This is NOT repeated writes/rewrites of the same data but a continuous filling of the disk. A big cache provides some buffer space while other parts of the cache are being flushed out to disk, meaning the drive continuously accepts data rather than pasuing constantly (as with a small cache) to write chunks of data.

  • excuse me,

    but we're talking 5GB Microdrive which goes into your PCMCIA type II slot - you can have 3-4 hours of "movies" (call it what you want - but you have 320x240 resolution without anti aliasing etc...) - so they can be compressed quite easily with any codec... and that includes stereo sound..

    Of course - the power required to operate those kind of driver continuosly will "milk" you battery right away - but thats another point..

  • "more than typical DVD" (Score:3)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:17PM (#80922) Homepage Journal
    Yes, and at 400 dollars, it's also $370 more than a DVD recordable.

    - A.P.

    --

  • DVD R Drive - $700
    20 DVD R disks - $500
    total: $1200 for 100gb

    20 Toshiba 5gb PCMCIA cards - $8000
    total: $8000 for 100gb
  • As other posters have pointed out, the figure is closer to 750. What they haven't pointed out is that this is giga *BITS* not giga *BYTES*. So, at the maximum density, you're talking 750/8, or less than 100 gigabytes, which seems a lot more resonable
  • Exactly the situation I was referring to. That major in Electronic Media (until I quit to make a good salary) taught me at least a few things.
  • This is a teeny hard drive, not a RAM device - I doubt it would be an acceptable solution for a digital device unless it has some serious built-in cache.

    Just food for thought before you pitch a few on the old AmEx.

  • > There are camcorders now out there that can do 1280x960 still images, but I don't think Sony makes one

    http://64.14.40.97:80/explore_products/productin de x.jsp#Digital8
    "Megapixel (1/4" 1,070k Pixels) CCD imager built in for high quality still images and MPEG Movie Mode to capture 60 second MPEG movie clips are two new features added to the DCR-TR730"

    Ok, 1,070k is less than 1280x960, but it's more than 640x480. And if that MPEG clip can go to the Memory Stick interface (with "Memory Stick® PC Card Adapter" being listed as an optional accessory), something like this could be useful.
    --

  • Whoops. Hit enter by accident on that last one :)

    This sounds like the sort of thing we need for the ultimete PDAs of the future. Who cares about a 1GB hard drive [slashdot.org] when you can have a 5GB card that's *almost* as fast.
    --
    Join my fight against Subway's new cut!
    http://spine.cx/subway/ [spine.cx]

    --
    Join my fight against Subway's new cut!
    http://spine.cx/subway/ [spine.cx]

  • battery times (Score:3)

    by psp ( 7269 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:27PM (#80929)
    Everyone seems to be talking about how nice one of these would fit in his iPAQ/Palm/whatever. The truth is, unfortunately, that harddrives sucks battery life really fast from handhelds, which makes them in reality unuseable. I tried an iPAQ with an IBM microdrive, and playing MP3s from it emptied a fully charged battery in about 10 minutes.

  • Re:Bah... (Score:1)

    by mph ( 7675 )
    I thought stripping was a form of recovery, actually. Or at least watching stripping is. Now striping, on the other hand...

  • 5GB in a camcorder card slot? Why? (Score:5)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @03:06PM (#80931)
    I hope you don't think the card slot on your camcorder is for recording video. Unless you're getting a new camcorder Sony hasn't announced yet, those Memory Stick and PC Card slots are both for storing still images. Lousy, low-res ones.

    Even the $2500 Sony camcorders max out at 640x480 for stills, which look nice on a computer screen or a TV, but they won't make for anything bigger than a so-so 3"x5" print640x480 digital still cameas sell for $70 these days. And on a 128MB card or Memory Stick, you can fit about 1300 images at that resolution. Isn't that enough?

    There are camcorders now out there that can do 1280x960 still images, but I don't think Sony makes one, and in any case, that's still bottom-of-the-line by digital still-camera standards these days. Remember: digital video cameras are terrible still cameras, and digital still cameras are terrible video cameras.

    If you could dump video to the PC Card slot in the camcorder the 5GB drive would be nice for that. But you can't.

    On the other hand, if you have one of those new Nikon D-1x or Kodak 760 3000x2000 resolution still cameras ($4000 or $7000, respectively, without a lens, flash or AC adaptor), something like this is good indeed, since the raw, lossless images take up about 18MB each. A 5GB card would hold a couple hundred such images, or a couple thousand minimal-loss JPEGs. That's pretty nice. A 5GB device would even be good for the "3 megapixel" 2000x1500 class of cameras, with plenty of room for a month or more of heavy shooting. But for the 640x480 images camcorders put out?
  • Problem is, that's not caching - that's buffering, or batching, or write queuing. There's a significant difference.

    Caching in any computer system implies attempted reuse, of which there is none in such a system.

    Without reuse, all you're doing is changing the maximum queue length in a G/G/1/L/M queuing system (remember those from your intro to queuing theory class that should be mandatory for any sort of technical media major?); it improves burst tolerance, but doesn't increase steady state throughput one bit.

  • Caching? (Score:4)

    by artdodge ( 9053 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @03:00PM (#80933) Homepage
    For most media devices, a "serious built-in cache" won't have much effect, since cache is only useful when you're re-reading/re-writing the same (relatively small) regions over and over, and that's not the standard access pattern for most digital media devices.

    Repeat after me: caching is not a panacea.

  • Check out the Sony DCR-PC110 - Mini-DV camcorder with 1152x864 still images. Can be had for ~$1400 US (watch out for the gray market cameras ~$1100 with no battery or warrantee). Although you're certainly correct that the still resolution is nothing to write home about, it's adequate for snapshots and vacation pictures.

    I don't know where you take YOUR vacations, but to say 1152x864 is adequate for vacations is absolutely incorrect. When I'm going on vacation, I'm usually travelling far from home, on a trip I'll probably only make once in my life. I won't be able to re-shoot my vacation pictures, so high quality is FAR more important when on vacation. 1152x864 is completely inadequate.

    I suspect most other people will feel the same.

  • Wow, this is bigger than the hard drive inside my laptop. If I didn't only have one PCMCIA slot and an external USB hard drive with 20Gig, and I had a job I'd almost be interested in buying this.

    --

  • As a general rule you should never save to a lossy file format until your final output step. Therefor if you intend to edit the image in any way you should use non lossy formats when ever possible. Practically this means capture as TIFF when ever possible.

    Besides which 1,600 X 1,200 is considered marginal professonally. The D1X at the link above can output 3,008 x 1,960 at 12 bits

  • It's an actual hard drive crammed into the card, just like their previous 2 gig Type II PCMCIA card, or the IBM CF MicroDrive.

  • Re:Previous Article (Score:4)

    by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:11PM (#80938) Journal
    This is a Type II PCMCIA card, and the PDA had a Type II CF slot. There are converters, but as it stands, the iPaq with PCMCIA sleeve is one of the few PDAs that can use this card.

  • RoadPr0n! (Score:4)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:34PM (#80939) Homepage Journal

    I've been holding out on buying a hand held unit until I would be able to bring some pr0n with me on the road.

    Thanks Toshiba!

    :)
  • what rateing does this have ?

    laptop drives have printed on them the pressures it can take and the amount of shock they can take

    this is for when you take your laptop flying plus for DOD to know when they are building those flying machines they send around china

    so does thig go well ?

    my handheld could do with 5GB (-;

    what would you use it for ?
    (excludeing Jpeg and Mpeg(thats MP3's))

    regards

    john jones
  • Here [evonyx.com] you go, no blowing hands off neccessary.

  • Re:5GB in a camcorder card slot? Why? (Score:3)

    by Grond ( 15515 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @04:40PM (#80942) Homepage
    Actually, I've got a Sony TRV-17 camcorder right here. It has a memory stick slot that can be used for still pictures and for recording MPEG-2 videos to. That's right, it records MPEG-2 on the fly. Admittedly the movie quality is only as good as the stills (about 640x480), but it can record them. As such, it'd be great to have a high-capacity medium for them, as even a 128MB memory stick won't allow for a very long recording.

  • Two of these things would rock... (Score:3)

    by cygnus ( 17101 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:14PM (#80943) Homepage
    In my Newton! :)

  • I don't know whether too many other people besides Sony make flash video recorders, but I'm sure if they do, they don't use Sony's standard. I thought we were open technical standard promoters here. I'm not sure but the very fact that it's called "Sony memstick" doesn't make it sound open.

    My point is compact flash and smartmedia is much, much cheaper than memstick. While that doesn't make it better than a pcmcia disk in video recording, only mentioning memstick does make flash sound worse than it is.

    The prices of 128M compact flash and smartmedia flash ($70-80) have made me think a lot more about buying a flash mp3 player than a cd-mp3 player. And it uses batteries slower. And I'm kind of fetishist about small devices. And sure as daylight 256M parts will shortly become cheap too. Now if only someone would design an mp3 player which can ADDRESS a decent amount of flash. They seem to be limited in their maximum flash capacity, whereas the camera I bought 10 months ago can still take whatever huge size flash I put in it. Go figure, bad design. The mp3 player makers think they're selling flash, and not good mp3 players. Imbeciles.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by n6mod ( 17734 )
    I can't figure out why Toshiba is bothering with Type II PCMCIA. A 5GB Type II CF card would be very cool, and would have some serious utility, but there just aren't that many devices that have full-size PC-Card slots that need removable online storage like this.

    (I remember drives the size of washing machines... now something the size of a credit-card is considered "full-size.")

    -Zandr
  • Lossy compression is not an option? Not even high-quality jpeg? (Just wondering if you've tried, and if you could elaborate on the details.. I'm curious). I find it very diffult, if not impossible, to tell the difference between some decent jpeg compression and a lossless image, especially at 1600x1200.
  • Okay... first, which sony flash video recorder are you referring to? Any Sony video camera I've seen uses tape. Yes, some have a memstick slot; it's used for taking stills with the video camera, or taking low-res low-rate video snapshots. Same goes for the still cameras that do video; the video is not meant to be high quality; it's for little 30 second, low-rate snapshots.

    Now, is memstick expensive? Yes. Is that because its' proprietary? Yes. Does it have a technical advantge over CF or SM? No.

    But you see, I bought a Sony Cybershot... and I bought a couple memsticks. Sure, CF would have been cheaper, by quite a bit. But that's all I need. There is no recurring cost for me, either way. It's not like I need some piece of flash, at this time, that fits in everythin I own; it's for storing pictures on. I don't go around buying more flash all the time, so I don't really care if it's more expensive.

    On the topic of mp3 cd players.. I have an exonion.... avoid it at all costs. The mp3 playback quality STINKS. I don't know what's up.. but it beats the crap out of my tunes. Low-end filters, bass is missing (and I know it's there; this is on tracks that sound fantastic with winamp or whatever else I use on the computer). CD playback is okay, but it still pauses between tracks, which sucks.
    Be very wary of which mp3 player you get.. many have shitty decoders.

    My advice? Get an MD player...

  • Go get a HandEra 330 and you're ready to rock. Compact Flash, Secure Digital/MMC, and a bad-ass high-res screen. It is THE monochrome PalmOS device.

    http://www.handera.com
  • You can extend the battery life of the iPaq if you use the PC Card Expansion Pack [compaq.com] which has an additional battery in it. Or you can use this cool PowerCartridge [mobileplanet.com] for 30 bucks instead.

  • The the Genio [pocketpcthoughts.com] that was just mentioned...

    Beats the HELL out of my Palm III...
  • The DVR-A03 is currently $650 or so, $775 in a firewire config.

    And DVD-R disks are $8.

    gotta love www.pricewatch.com
  • Ok, I suck at math, so I may have some errors here, but your 848GB seems wrong to me. Even if the platter had magnetic material all the way across, it would end up being something like:
    150(2(pi((1.8)/2)^2) i.e. 150GB/in2 * 2 (both sides of the platter) * (pi(r^2)) (the area of a circle). My answer gives something like 764GB. The fact is that a significant portion of the platter is not magnetic media. A more realistic area for a 1.8 inch disk is something like 2in2 as opposed to 2.5in2 (figure that the media is about 1/2in across) which means that they could probably scale this up to around 600GB per platter. Then again, if you scale this up to 4 platters like a modern notebook hard drive might have, then you end up with 2.4TB of data in your laptop. With this in mind, that 150GB/in2 limit doesn't really seem like that big of a deal.
  • Geez, don't be so harsh. I think he was quoting the article on /.

    Toshiba has managed to squeeze 5GB of storage space into a PCMCIA Type II SAN disk.

  • its not a CPRM device. its an ATA66.
    see the specs here : http://www.toshiba.com/taecdpd/techdocs/MK5002mpl/ 5002mplspec.shtml

    its also got a 3sec spin up time and consumes 1.5 W average power -- thats a bit hefty.
  • There is something wrong with your iPaq's battery. I use mine with a CF sleeve, and can usually get 1.5 hours out of it (some get 2-2.5). With a PC sleeve (and its corresponding battery) you can get 4-7 hours.

    --bdj

  • Just got a whole lot easier. ;)
  • Here [toshiba.com] is the Toshiba page for the same item. It is also interesting to note (if you read the article), that they've had a 2G version of this card around for a year.

  • There are converters, but as it stands, the iPaq with PCMCIA sleeve is one of the few PDAs that can use this card.

    Count the HP Jornada 720 as one of those. The PC card slot was the main reason I bought it, since that allows it to be on my 802.11b network at home.
  • Thank you for posting that. It is nice to read another person who appreciates that participating in a capitalist economy is more than being a consumer. At the very least, one has an obligation to one's self to be a thoughtful consumer. Giving advantage to the producers in the economy by not pursuing one's own best interest is flushing money down the toilet.
  • 1) It seems a fall onto carpet from a desk would be a lot less than 3400Gs, esp as the microdrive is light, so the carpet will be "springy".

    2) It's all cubes vs squares: the mass of the moving parts, and hence the force they exert under accelleration, varies with the cube of the size, while the cross section of the parts, and hence their rigidity, varies with the square. So every halving in feature size doubles the Gs it can withstand.

    When you realize that this applies to the head going back and forth over the platter, it explains why drives got smaller (physically) before they got larger (capacity): smaller drives have better reliability.
  • The Psion Series 7 has a Type II PCMCIA slot
  • Well, you were pretty close...
    Either way, it's a metric buttload of pr0n!
  • You appear to have calculated: 1.8*pi*150 ~=848.
    Would the following be more accurate?
    0.9*0.9*pi*150*2 ~=763
    (area of a circle is pi*r^2, and both sides of the platter are in use)

  • DVD R Drive - $700
    20 DVD R disks - $500
    total: $1200 for 100gb

    20 Toshiba 5gb PCMCIA cards - $8000
    total: $8000 for 100gb

    69445 aol floppies - $0
    total: $0 for 100gb

    it could happen...

  • Actually that's not quite true, the cache is good for keeping bursty writes smooth, however if you are pushing data to it as fast as it can write to disk then the buffer will become full and at that point it writes to disk at the same rate it receives data, the buffer just postpones that fact for a short period of time.

  • but FACE IT, who has a 20 gig drive in their laptop?

    I do! As does the guy in the office next door, and the one down the hall, and the two upstairs, and Oh wait... The guy on the other side of the room has a 30GB drive in his.. 20GB drives for notebooks are pretty cheap, and the performance increase over a 1-2 year old 4-6 GB drive is phenomenal..

  • I really don't care if someone steals my laptop

    Can i steal your laptop then? Please?
  • This is good news for iPaQ users :) Can't wait to get my hand on one of these, IBM is coming out with a 4 GIG Microdirve which will also be sweet but I don't know when!
  • Don't you mean RAID 10 (1+0)? RAID1 is slower, not faster.
  • And see you batteries die faster than you can fill the disk. Unless you can carry a 10 pounds shoulder-type battery, it's hardly useful.

    I would love to use that, but given my experience with digital cameras I will stick with flash memory cards, 256 MB is not that bad and I have enough battery time to fill it.

  • There are a few pictures of the card on this page [dynabook.com].
  • You could do what I did, I have an Ipaq with the dual PC Card (PCMCIA) jacket. It's 3 batteries all together basically. Battery life is like an hour or so, so its still not hot. Not for the 150$ the jacket costs.

    ----------------------------------
  • Toshiba's press release is here [toshiba.com].
  • The 2G version of this hard drive is already for sale here [toshiba.com]. I'd imagine this 5G version will look just like it.
  • Yes, except that shock resistance decreases and power usage increases with density, which means that 848GByte disk would need to be shock isolated better than a high-end turntable, and need full-time AC power... which sort of defeats the purpose of it being PCMCIA, doesn't it? Also, what's the bandwidth of the PCMCIA slot? Doesn't it take about 10 DAYS to transfer 848GBytes of data through the PCMCIA bus?
  • I'd almost forgotten about Syquest. I still have one of those giant 44MB 5.25" cartridges around here somewhere...

    -A.

  • Every few months a new innovation in storage technology comes out and it seems to me that copyright infringment is getting easier every 6 months. Within a year or two, recordable dvd technology will probably be standardized (probably around DVD-R) and that will raise major issues for the copyright cartels and their congresscritters.

    I remember seeing something to the effect that the global music industry is worth around $15B USD, but the American software industry alone is worth around $170B USD. Then you get into the American computer hardware industry's value to our economy and that will force those such as my congressman, Bob Goodlatte, into choosing to either deep 6 the American advantage over most of the world in the computer industry or to tell the copyright cartels to take a hike. Say what you will about the copy protection systems that the software industry uses, but at least it uses technology to solve its problem a hell of a lot more often than it uses government compared to the other copyright industries.

    I think the overall intellectual property rights debate shows the difference between those that want an essentially truly free market and those that want a relatively free market, but always protect minor industries. I want much less protection for IP, not because I believe that bootlegging is right, but because IP law impedes progress when it is very strong and throws a monkey wrench into the free market. For example, ow many innovators have either been driven out of business by patent law, or just threw up their hands and quit because of the laws? We'll never know, just as we'll never know just how many kids we could have saved from drugs by dealing with drugs the way we deal with alcohol and tobacco products.

    It is only innevitable that someone will make a dvd player for the average joe's home entertainment system that can play fully encrypted DVDs from a DVD-R. Some company like APEX will realize that the market for such a product could be astronomical if built up correctly. That is when we as Americans will have to decide between market capitalism and market socialism. If our courts protect APEX and either strike down the DMCA or limit it then that is a strong vote for capitalism. If not... then well it is time to stop bullshitting ourselves about being the "land of the free."

  • The first thing I thought of when I read the summary: if you used DeCSS to grab the MPEG video from a DVD, you could copy the video to this PC card, and watch the video on your laptop. Without needing a laptop DVD drive!

    This would be so cool for laptops like the Sony PictureBook [sonystyle.com].

    Of course, that would involve using DeCSS, so the MPAA wouldn't like it. With the DMCA, it would probably be illegal in the United States (although it sounds like "Fair Use" to me).

    steveha

  • I use a tiny USB-powerd hard drive made by Apricorn to backup my Laptop while on the road. I really don't care if someone steals my laptop beacuse I can cary the backup on my person. IBM Microdrives have been too expensive and not enoughf capacity, but this PC-Card size looks pretty good!
  • You could make the software a bit smarter - It could power up the drive and cache the MP3 onto memory, power down the drive and play the MP3 from memory.
  • I don't think you know what you're talking about. My 1GB IBM Microdrive worked flawlessly in a Canon G1 camera during a recent 1 month (~500 picture) trip to Thailand.
  • I carry The Matrix and Bladerunner around on my Microdrive with my IPAQ. After you compress it down for the screen size and the limit of playback speed they come out to around 2-300 meg a piece. So thats about 20 movies on one of these bad boys.
  • Join my fight against Subway's new cut!

    WTF. Even the old cut, let's think about this for a second.

    2 quick slices and you end up with 2 peices of bread, the main part and the secondary part.

    The OH SO CRUEL laws of physic say that both parts are more or less the same as the whole. (without compression of course)

    So the only way to get a "lot" of topings is to have both the "food" and the bread HIGHLY compressed. This depends solely on the process and proccesie building your sandwinch!

    What NEEDS to be implented is a computer controlled compression robot that the proccesie can insert both topings and the secondary part in to receive MAXIUM compression and to also insure a prefect fit.

    I haven't eaten at subway for a while, but plan to this weekend. Do you have any techinal document that I could take with me to the sandwinch shop to back up the "cheap" cut claim you so proudly disrespect on your web site?

    I can hold my own in a debate of techinal nature, but having techinal document would help my case.

    Maybe you would like to join me this weekend for a sandwich to provide "back up support" incase the processie is under some form of mind control by the sandwich shop? We may need to de-program the processie, are you ready for this? I got a van, 25 hits of LSD and a sensory depervantion chamber.


  • I would like to slap one of these into an portable mp3, why not? Ever look at some of the memory chips used for these devices? Roughly the same size. Sure you couldn't take the mp3 player sky diving, but it would be good enough to jog to the store and back.
  • If I had any practical use worth the amount of money I would have to spend for one of these, I might actually buy into one. But, because 40 gigs of hard drive space on my desktop and another 5 gigs on my laptop (old, inherited ... I don't have the money for a laptop) are enough, I think I'll pass for now.

    If I may ask, what are some of the more common uses for Type II PC card hard disks?

  • The article says the drive has a transfer rate of 5.2MB/s; that's a lot faster than flash cards that top out below 2MB/s AFAIK. You're right that the seek time is going to suck compared to flash, though.

    It would probably be great for digital cameras, because those mostly do contiguous writes.
  • its a solid state thing, remember the 16 meg SAN disk in the Netpliance? I'm assuming thats what they are referring to. Like this? [pc-cardmart.com]

  • Err dude, the camera has it's own internal cache/frame buffer, the rest (flash, drive) is to store the data.. not to process in real time, in that case no camera would work only with flash, how could you snapshot 1/500th of a second with a 2048x2048 camera with a flash system?

  • "So in other words, don't drop it anywhere you wouldn't normally drop a regular hard drive."

    With a device that is designed for mobility, I want a little bit better (although you can be sure that I'm pretty darn careful with my camera for the sake of the lenses if nothing else).

    For me, I want it to be roughly as durable as my cell phone. Sure, I could break it if I tried hard enough, but it has held up fine to the usual assortment of mishaps that you can expect if you carry it with you at all times (falls to the pavement when I open the car door, dropped it on the kitchen floor when carrying too many groceries into the house in one trip, etc.)

  • Reliability will be one of the key questions (Score:4)

    by fetta ( 141344 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:13PM (#80990)
    I have a Casio digital camera and use a 340 Meg IBM Microdrive in it, and its great to have that kind of capacity. The problem has been reliability - I've already had to have it replaced under warranty once after only a few months of use under gentle conditions.

    The article talks about carrying these new drives around "in a shirt pocket," but I'd like to see some data on reliability before spending too much money on one.

    Having said that, I still want one :-)

  • Oh they're in trouble now! (Score:4)

    by Docrates ( 148350 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:55PM (#80991) Homepage
    Didn't IBM patent the concept of large hard drive space in small packages?

    Toshiba is in deep shite now!
  • *WAIT don't mod this down because of the title PLEASE*

    This is about the coolest thing I have heard of in a long time. the last was someone on #/. who was working on a way to interface the human brain with a computer dirrectly. That was cool. This card is awesome cause I can bring new life to my old laptop!! DUUUUDE, this is sweet.OK OK OK, I will shut up now.

  • good news is, playing it full screen on a handheld is actually normal size :)

    wait, wait... yes... wait, yup! that's a nipple!
  • "This is where god would go if he wanted to get off blow!"

    Family Guy rules. IMHO, atleast on par with the Simpsons (and probably better). Who can resist a coke-sniffing dog and a guy in a wheelchair chasing down drug dealers?

    By the way, in that episode your sig is from, did you notice the room Brian had at the rehab place? Room number 42. Hmm.....
    --
  • Yes, the shows ability to find funny risque topics to exploit amazes me... Simpsons is a classic though... better no, but complimenting each other definitely.
  • Can this type II card be used as a boot device? It would make for some interesting OS swapping, while being able to keep the main filesystem mountable by most... err well 5GB I guess you dont really need the laptops internal HD for a filesystem do ya...

  • Go get a HandEra 330 and you're ready to rock.

    No you're not, the HandEra has a CF slot, and no PCMCIA slot, and besides, what good is 5Gb of storage on a crummy palm?

    The only real solution is a Compaq iPAQ with the PCMCIA sleeve.

  • how much shock can this take? They said it's single platter, and with the data being squished together so closely i wonder how they make it so it's safe from shocks, such as carrying in the bottom of a backpack
  • I look forward to having an ultra-slow RAID 3 array, once I fill up both PCMCIA (OOPS, PCCard) slots with these...

    Actually, the speed seems in line with other laptop hard drives. Portable server, here I come! Now where did I put that USB DLT?

  • I've seen all these posts with people just itching to be the first to rain on the parade.

    The simple fact is that it's a great advancement, and a usefull one. Sure, it may not be great for portable MP3 players or Video cameras, but I'd bet it will make those professional studio cameras a hell of a lot better when I'm doing a 2 hour photo shoot. In addition, it's a great tool for research as well. Being able to have small recording devices with 5 GB space allows scientists to set up much higher quality time-lapse and real-time remote data gathering equipment.

    So stop trying to bash ol' timmy and do something constructive.

  • Something to keep in mind when recording with these mini hard disks. If you are recording audio using the built in mic, you stand a chance of picking up the sound of the disk heads seeking. In my Canon G1, I use the IBM 340MB and the camera's mic does a really good job of picking up those noises. In my case, it's loud. It sounds like I'm standing next to someone removing paint off the side of a house.

    I don't really care, I bought it to take stills, not movies, but it's something to keep in mind. Cameras with the mics that protrude from the camera, like on most camcorders, might not experience this problem, but if it's "inside" the chassis, like it is on most digital cameras, you'll probably have similar issues.
  • UNLESS it has CPRM, in which case I will forget all about this. So which is it, Toshiba? Do you want to succeed or fail?
  • I have a few thoughts on the Memory Stick, especially the MagicGate "technology"...

    http://treklink.net/~overcode/copy-rant.txt

    -John
  • If they can make five gigs this small when will I see it on my Palm Pilot? How about a digital video camera I can really fit into my pocket.

    That's more storage than my first laptop computer had and still plenty of storage to run Linux (even WinMe instead of WinCE) in a handheld device.

  • OH DUH yes you're right ! Oh well, /me go back to school :)

  • Information storage density (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:22PM (#81006)
    According to an article reported by Slashdot [esj.com] recently, the limit in storage density on a magnetic medium is 150Gb/in2. So with a 1.8in disk, this little PCMCIA hard-disk could contain a whopping 848Gb a few years from now !
  • > If they can make five gigs this small when will I see it on my Palm Pilot?

    When they shrink car batteries down to the same size.

  • The catch... (Score:3)

    by tenzig_112 ( 213387 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:12PM (#81008) Homepage
    it's a modified Syquest EZ-135! It will work for a few weeks and then die in the middle of a copying process.

    Ack! The horror!

  • is putting a PCMCIA slot on your desktop to make 5G of data easily portable to your laptop.

  • Correct, but all that will go on theses drives will come from CDs/DVDs in the first place...

    I won't ever use a RAID0 for my main disk. RAID1 (mirroring) is the way to go in this case, fast and secure (and yes twice as expansive).
  • Great for MP3s or filez, but when it come to video you want more the 5G of storage. 45mins of DV footage? Very costly Meg per Dollar compare to MiniDV tape.

    Could be pretty cool for still images, digital cameras? But once it's full that's a lot of images to delete. (Unless ofcourse it's only got 10 really high quality images on it....)

    It's pretty neat all the same, wonder when the 60G version is coming out.....


    --

  • its a solid state thing, remember the 16 meg SAN disk in the Netpliance? I'm assuming thats what they are referring to. Like this?

    So why does the article indicate that it has a platter? If this is the case, can it take the shock of use while riding on a bus?

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • That's what he meant. But Real Men use RAID 5. Real Men's Heroes just NFS mount a NetApp Filer [netapp.com] over GigaBit Fibre.


    Carl G. Jung
    --

  • First Generation Tech ? (Score:4)

    by q-soe ( 466472 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @03:28PM (#81038) Homepage
    Now this is an intersting development and worth a look, my only questions (which the article doesnt mention) are simple.

    How hot does it run (PC Card slots are notoriously cooling innefficient ?
    How Noisy (maybe silent but worth asking) ?
    How Reliable (MTBF Rating or similar) ?
    How Robust (Shockproof) ?
    What drivers are required (if the device is driver independant or self installing on Win then that makes it an ideal presentation storage device, simply plug in an off you go)?

    I cant seem to find this info around the web - then again maybe im blind so if someone finds it can they post it ? this is the sort of info i would use before making a purchase - and this device is something i would use and at a low enought cost (us$400 UNIT is AU$800 (rough) but thats launch and for around AU400-500 this would serve a usefull purpose for road warriors).

    COol piece of tech really - cant wait to see one

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