Product Code Database
The Microdrive was a miniature, 1-inch hard disk drive released in 1998 by IBM. The idea was originally created in 1992 by Timothy J. Riley and Thomas R. Albrecht at the IBM Research in San Jose. A team of engineers and designers at IBM Fujisawa, Japan facility helped make the creation of the drive possible.
Due to the failure of the HP Kittyhawk, a 1.3-inch hard disk drive also created in 1992 by Hewlett Packard, initial support for it was reluctant. Despite that, development persisted. The Microdrive caused the creation of and used the CompactFlash Type II format which became the de facto standard for devices utilizing the technology at the time. Because of this, and its advantages over flash technology, the Microdrive ended up being a success.
Although a niche for a short time, the Microdrive market later became very competitive. Many companies began producing miniature hard disk drives also referred to as Microdrives. Some offered more storage capacity or were even smaller in physical size to the original Microdrive. This did not last long however. By the mid to late 2000s, miniature hard disk drives were being viewed as obsolete with flash media such as CompactFlash, SD card, and USB flash surpassing them in speed, capacity, durability, and pricing.
In June of 1992, prior to the Microdrive, a 1.3-inch hard disk drive nicknamed the "HP Kittyhawk" was launched. It was a collaboration creation by Hewlett-Packard, AT&T and Citizen Watch. It was the smallest hard drive in the world at the time, being 2.0" × 1.44" × 0.414" (50.8mm × 36.5mm × 10.5mm) in size while offering 20, then later 40 MB of storage capacity. The Kittyhawk was a colossal failure, and was withdrawn 2 years later in 1994. In 1996, HP shut down its Disk Memory Division and exited the market.
The leader of mobile drive development at the IBM Fujisawa facility at the time, Hideya Ino, highly sought the potential of a 1-inch disk drive. He had a team collaborate with the IBM researchers to create working prototypes. Those prototypes were then used to persuade product planning and marketing teams to support the project. Two notable people from the Japan development team were Mitsuhiko Aoyagi and Kenji Kuroki, who contributed to launching the product line. Bill Healey and John Osterhout worked at the storage technology division in San Jose and were responsible for the business development and marketing of the Microdrive.
“For IBM Disk Drives, this was an uncharacteristically early announcement. We normally would never announce a product a year in advance of shipments,” Albrecht said. “Everyone agreed that it was necessary. People needed to design Type II slots, and there were also questions whether we were serious about this.”It was advertised by marketers in varying ways. One source claimed it was about the size of a large coin, weighing less than an AA battery, and had the capacity of over 200 floppy disks. Another said it weighed half as much as a golf ball, and had a capacity of 300 novels. A manager at Sanyo said it could store 1,500 1.5 mega-pixel images or 10 minutes of VGA-quality video. The Microdrive was expected to be launched by mid-1999, and would be a competitor to CompactFlash, which was originally released in 1994.
On June 24, 1999, IBM Japan announced the IBM Microdrive 340 MB for ¥58,000 or $475 USD.
On August 24, 1999, Microtech International announced they would be the first North American distributor of the 340 MB Microdrive.
In June 1999, IBM officially launched the first generation 1-inch Microdrive. The drive was initially ordered by several companies such as Compaq, Casio, Minolta, Nikon, and more.
The first generation of the Microdrive was a partial success, having a few products released using the drive such as the Sanyo VPC-SX500, and Casio QV2000UX.
The Microdrive was more expensive than conventional hard drives at the time, but less expensive than CompactFlash. The Microdrive cost $0.50 per MB while CompactFlash was $2 per MB.
By 2007, sales and profit of the Microdrive were dwindling so Hitachi discontinued production of 1 inch hard disk drives. Sales of 1-inch drives were only about 3,000 in a three-month period in 2007, while 560,000 units of 1-1.8-inch drives were sold throughout July to September 2007. Hitachi wanted to shift over to bigger 2.5 and 3.5-inch hard disk drives, rather than retain focus on the small hard disk drive business.
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Until 2006, Microdrives had higher capacity than CompactFlash cards. As of 2006, Microdrive's capacity advantages were exceeded by CompactFlash cards (which are the same size and are often compatible with each other), and USB flash drives. Corsair launches 16GB Flash Voyager drive
Microdrives allow more write cycles than flash storage, making them suitable for use as swap space in embedded applications. Flash storage always needs to move some old data around while writing, to ensure the flash's finite write life is consumed equally. Microdrives are better at handling power loss in the middle of writing: a bug in the wear levelling algorithm can cause data loss in flash storage were a card unplugged at the exact wrong time. Data on rotational disks is modified in place, and hard drive algorithms at the time were much more advanced than those of flash storage. Being mechanical devices however, they are more sensitive to physical shock and temperature changes than flash memory. For example, a microdrive will generally not survive a 4-foot (1.2-meter) drop onto a hard surface whereas CF cards can survive much higher falls. They are not designed to operate at high altitudes (over 10,000 feet or 3,000 meters) but can be safely used on most commercial aircraft as cabins are generally pressurized.
Microdrives are not as fast as the high-end CompactFlash cards; they generally operate at around 4–6 megabytes per second while high-end CF cards can operate at 45 megabytes per second.
Unlike flash storage, Microdrives require power even when no data is being transferred to or read from them, just to keep the disk spinning in order to maintain quick access. As a result, many devices such as the iPod mini leave the drive switched off for most of the time while periodically starting it up to fetch data from it to fill the device's buffer. Microdrives will switch off after idling for more than a few seconds to counter this problem; however, this means that it needs to spin up for the next access, which takes about 1 second. This effect would be particularly problematic if an operating system is being run from the drive, as seen in the case of the LifeDrive.
Since they are thicker than flash-based CF cards, Microdrives require a Type II slot. Many newer compact cameras only have a Type I slot due to the increasing popularity of flash-based cards, so Microdrives have limited popularity outside of the professional photography market.
Certain bus-powered CF card readers lack the power needed to run a Microdrive although they do take CF II cards. When using such a device, it will usually be detected by the host, but errors will occur once the user attempts to access the drive.
Some "OEM Only" drives use the CompactFlash form factor but only provide a 5V IDE/ATA interface. These will not work in readers or devices which expect a 3.3V interface and full CompactFlash functionality.
| DMDM-10170 | 170 MB | June 1999 | June 2000 |
| DMDM-10340 | 340 MB | June 1999 | June 2000 |
| DSCM-10340 | 340 MB | June 2000 | December 2002 |
| DSCM-10512 | 512 MB | June 2000 | December 2002 |
| DSCM-11000 | 1 GB | June 2000 | December 2002 |
| IBM/Hitachi Merge | |||
| 340 MB | |||
| 512 MB | Jan 2003 | ||
| 1 GB | Jan 2003 | ||
| 3K4-2 | 2 GB | August 23 2003 | |
| 3K4-4 | 4 GB | August 23 2003 | |
| 3K6-3 | 3 GB | ||
| 3K6-4 | 4 GB | ||
| 3K6-6 | 6 GB | Feb 23 2005 | January 2008 |
| 3K8-8 | 8 GB | January 2008 | |
| Unreleased | |||
| 3K8-10 | 10 GB | N/A | |
In 2004, Seagate launched 2.5 and 5 GB hard disk drives in the same small physical form-factor as IBM Microdrive and referred to them as either 1-inch hard drives or CompactFlash hard drives due to the trademark issue. These drives were also commonly known as the Seagate ST1. In 2005, Seagate launched an 8 GB model. Seagate also sold a standalone consumer product based on these drives with a product known as the Pocket Hard Drive. These devices came in the shape of a hockey puck with an integrated USB 2.0 cable.
Seagate launched their 6 GB mini drive on the same day as Hitachi, in February 2005.
Western Digital launched a 6 GB external USB 2.0 microdrive as a part of the Passport Pocket brand in March 2006. This was made as a competitor to the Seagate Pocket Hard Drive. The unit had 2 MB of cache, 11 ms seek, spun at 3,600 RPM, and was 60 × 45 × 9 mm. The price for the unit was $130 upon release.
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