1.8 Inch Removable Hard Drives Coming

bedessen writes "According to an article at PCWorld.com, a new type of removable storage known as iVDR will be demonstrated at January's Consumer Electronics Show. The iVDR standard (backed by a consortium consisting of a number of manufacturers) describes a lightweight, compact, removable hard disk drive compatible with a wide range of applications from AV to PC devices. The products on display will come in 2.5" and 1.8" form factors with parallel and serial ATA interfaces. Capacity will start at 80GB for around $170, but manufacturers hope to drop this to under $80 and well as double the capacity by next quarter." Here's hopin'

Let me put one of these in my iPaq....

[rudy079]

Just imagine if HP makes a jacket that fits this into an Ipaq... ::wets pants in anticipation::

Yeah, I'll think I'll pass on this one...

[weave]

From the article:

One more hurdle to clear for iVDR in the use of consumer electronics is that of a copyright protection format. The consortium plans to approach the movie industry soon and hopes to complete the standardization of its copy protection code by March, next year, Hioki said.

Re:iPod?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm not mistaken, it's the size of a standard PC Card. I think the iPod's current form factor cannot get any smaller because it has to be built to accommodate the physical size of the hard drive.

IMHO, it would be dumb to redesign the iPod case, because the controls and display are perfectly positioned in the existing one. If they do anything, they should replace the drive with this smaller model, and change the battery design to use the saved space, so you can get more mileage out of a single charge.

Personally, I'd rather see a new TiVo which could accommodate a stack of about 5-10 of these things (while I'm dreaming, let's stick in a RAID-5 option) but could still be shrunk down to the size of an analog cable box from the hulking beast it is now.

~Philly

Re:Just how useful is this going to be?

[weave]

Amen. You have to wonder why these storage manufacturers are so willing to risk product failure and a hit to their own profits, to save some imaginary profit hit to some other industry and companies. What's in it for them? (discounting the fact that some of them own entertainment companies of course...)

Why are hard drive connectors male ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that hard drives & floppy drives have the male connectors (which often get bent) and cables have the female connectors?

Sony Noticably Absent

[spinozaq]

I see that Sony is absent from the list of members. One wonders whether they will ever use an industry standard storage in any of their products *cough* Compact Flash *cough*. It's almost ironic though, because they make massivly overpriced digital camaras that take standard computer media, floppies and CD-Rs. I'll like to beat a few sony execs will some memory sticks.

Floppy Replacement?

[LinuxInDallas]

You know, every now and then I look down at my floppy drive and start to wonder if there will ever be another standard like it for removable storage. Does anyone know if the PC industry is working on that?

What prompted me to say that is here is another great little storage device that looks like it could be made to be portable and fairly rugged. Is technology changing too fast for the industry to want to standardize on a real floppy replacement?

For some reason I am not all that interested in carrying around a CD-R with me. They are nice, but 3.5" floppies seem more rugged and definitely smaller. Oh well.