Made in Japan: iVDR Media Hard Drive Storage

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.techjapan.com/Article806.html' target='_blank'>http://www.techjapan.com/Article806.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"iVDR is another storage format unlikely to get outside of Japan, which reminds me of Iomega's Jaz series. But the capacities are much better -- we go up to 80GB this time. Though there are three possible sizes of iVDR, these discs are 80 x 110 x 12.7mm, or about 3" wide and 4.3" tall. IO Data Device Corporation will release 40GB and 80GB iVDR standard media, as well as a USB 2.0 iVDR adapter, in late January. The price of the 40GB "iVDR-H40" media is 20,790 yen, the 80GB "iVDR-H80" media 31,290 yen, and the "USB2-iVDR" supporting adapter 10,290 yen...The equipment complies with standards set forth by the iVDR Hard Drive Consortium, and is usable as a removable disc by the PC. The media body uses reinforced plastic, and is rated for up to 900G of shock impact when not operating."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/usb2ivdr.jpg" /><br /><br />Cool concept, but we'll probably never see it here. I use a portable 2.5" 40 GB hard drive as a second level backup, but something like this would make it easier for me to do rotating data backups. I'm a big fan of external drives - how about you?

[Philip Colmer]

That's about $200 for the 40GB drive. Seagate do a portable 40GB USB 2 drive for $160. These units are probably smaller, though :D.

Backups are probably my biggest concern at the moment. I don't currently use an external drive. I tend to back my video projects onto DVD - I've started trusting the Roxio software that will span large files over multiple DVDs. The performance sucks, though. I suspect that is down to the DVD drive being on the same ATA bus as the harddrive. I can't change that - all four of my ATA busses are used.

Can't wait to upgrade to a SATA system :-).

Back on topic, $5 per GB seems quite expensive. I think I'll stick to my DVDs for now.

--Philip

[Felix Torres]

As a rule, I don't see a big value premium in external drives unless you transfer multi-gigabyte files on a daily or near daily basis.
I tend to favor a DVD burner+flash card combo as a better value.
That said, I recently upgraded my tablet PC drive from 30 to 80 gb and I recycled the old one into a USB case. And I retained a simmed diwm version of the tablet boot image as an emergency fail safe in case the new drive ever fails.
I've used the external feature maybe twice, but I figure its better than just letting the small drive sit unused on the shelf...

[Philip Colmer]

Speaking of Jaz drives, is it me or does the Iomega REV drive look very similar? Actually, the cartridges look smaller. There is a photo showing one against a credit card and it doesn't look much bigger.

The basic USB 2 drive is $400 while a 35GB disk is $60.

Of course, the biggest difference between Jaz and REV is capacity - Jaz was only 1 or 2 GB depending on the model of drive you had.

--Philip