Smallest Hard Drive Unveiled

Roughly the size of a postage stamp, IBM's upcoming Microdrive will store 340MB.

Rex Farrance, PC World

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IBM, which invented the hard drive back in 1956, Wednesday unveiled the smallest hard drive yet. The new Microdrive will be about 1.4 inches wide and 1.7 inches long--about the size of a postage stamp. It will be about two-tenths of an inch thick--approximately equal to three stacked credit cards--and weigh less than an ounce. Yet the drive's tiny 1-inch disk will store up to 340MB.

When it arrives next spring, the product is expected to also come in a 170MB configuration that will use a single read/write head, in contrast to the dual-head 340MB model. "Although we're using the latest generation of giant magneto-resistive heads, we're not at all maxed out on capacity with the Microdrive," said David McIntyre, director of strategic marketing for IBM's Storage Systems division.

Initially, IBM expects the drive to be used as an alternative to high-priced flash memory cards in digital photo and video cameras. The drive will fit the CompactFlash II slot--a popular format for digital cameras and other handheld devices--but will bump up capacity dramatically from the current flash card limit of 64MB. IBM has not yet set prices, but McIntyre says the company projects a lower cost per megabyte than competing storage products, including CompactFlash and PC Card products, which cost well over $1 per megabyte. Canon, IBM, HP, Hitachi, and Minolta are all evaluating the drive for incorporation in handheld devices.

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