storage media

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Thu Dec 14 14:52:07 2000

At 12:08 PM 12/14/00 -0800, Dwight wrote:
> I just saw the coolest storage media. It was a 1 gig
>hard drive that was about 1 square inch and about 1/8
>inch thick.

That would be the IBM Microdrive. Used to come in 340 and 540 MB sizes, now
available in 1GB. We're almost to the point where we can build a 1/20"
scale model of a DEC-2065 that actually runs tops-20 :-)

However, as many digital camera owners have discovered, there is a
reliability issue with these drives. It seems that they are susceptible to
damage if their angular velocity exceeds a certain amount when they are
spinning. This appears at first glance to be due to the platters warping
due to precession. The platter(s) then contact the heads and when you hit
the servo heads it gets a bit messy.

Reading about this problem gave me the idea of building an inertial
navigation system out of dead IDE drives :-)


--Chuck
Received on Thu Dec 14 2000 - 14:52:07 GMT