June 9, 2004

Seagate jumps on CF microdrive bandwagon

Seagate is jumping into the Compact Flash Microdrive arena with the announcement of two drives. Digital Photography Review has a photo and a very brief description of the new products: bq. Seagate has announced it is to produce a 5 GB HDD in the CF Type II form factor, although they can't use the name 'Microdrive' that is essentially what this device is. Details at this point are a little thin on the ground, the metal cased device will be available in 2.5 GB and 5 GB capacities, it has a rotational speed of 3600 RPM and features 'RunOn' technology which appears to be a buffering system which avoids data loss if the unit is knocked or vibrated in use. Seagate will also be producing a 'built in' version of the device which is designed to be hardwired into devices such as MP3 players or PDA's. I used a 1GB IBM microdrive for my digital camera until it crashed on me last year. I'm now using a solid-state flash card but these are too expensive to go for anything over 1GB. Interesting technology to watch... Posted by DaveH at June 9, 2004 1:43 PM