You Might Want This Kind of Dust On Your Pocket PC

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-964711.html">http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-964711.html</a><br /><br />IBM is sprinking some Pixie Dust on their hard drives by increasing their capacity from 60GB to 80GB in notebooks. Whoopee. :roll: The real news though is the very last sentence of this article. "During 2003, disk drive densities are expected to reach up to 100 gigabits per square inch, which will allow for capacities of 400GB for desktop drives, 200GB for notebooks <b><i>and 6GB for IBM's one-inch Microdrive,</i></b> the company has said." I heard a quote this week that sums this up. "Boom-chicka-wah-WOW!" :lol: Source: Bob Anderson

[Sheynk]

thats about -10 gigs more than I know what to do with...

sorry for the bad math negative joke, i took the PLAN today

2.5 hours of testing :evil: :sleeping:

[nirav28]

Woohoo!!..More pr0n!!!

No seriously..I've been recording The Simpsons episodes...using my TV tuner card to my harddrive...One day I hope to have every single episode archived and be able to play on them on demand. Large hardrives are better. No too mention ripping all my CDs on storing them on a HD for playing it on demand from a central server in the basement.

[R K]

I still feel that CompactFlash type drives are still the way to go.
The issue is that they're so expensive that barely anyone has enough money to go above 512MB for CF and 256MB for SD cards.
Since Panasonic already has a 1GB SD Card prototype, I'm sure that it's not impossible for CF Cards to go above 2GB.

That actually leads me to the topic of integrated storage.
I wonder if it would be cheap for manufacturers to cut back internal SDRAM to 32MB, and add an integrated 128MB SD Card.
This way, users will be able to have 128MB totally dedicated to storage and 32MB totally dedicated to program memory. They won't have to worry about hard-resets any more either, nor will they have to worry about their batteries being slightly drained while their PPCs are off.

On second thought, it probably wouldn't be any cheaper but it sure would be convenient, but that leads me to another topic on this bunny trail.

What if manufacturers were to eliminate the ROM completely?
Maybe they could tone it down to 8MB to store minimal system specific information. The user would be given the chance to load everything on to the integrated SD Card and it would give the user the freedom to choose from a wide variety of operatim systems, or just Windows/Linux for now.

In conclusion, I would like to see Pocket PCs improve in the memory department.

[Ed Hansberry]

I wonder if we'll have to start partitioning drives or mandate they are formatted in FAT32? FAT16 has a 4GB (or is it 2?) per partition. I've been using NTFS for so many years I cannot remember.

[Fitch]

Yeah, the real main use is gonna have to be video. This will help the PVR industry. With all the TiVos and ReplayTVs, none of them really make one that handle HiDef signals because it takes so dern much space up! But with a 400GB drive, you may actually be able to get a 40 hour HD PVR.
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/noncgi/smiles/drooling1.gif

[szamot]

sprinke some of that dust on my SD card and make that 6 gigs and you will get my money. Solid state is where it is at. Microdrives are good for notebooks and occasionaly PPC usage but not full time usage. The CF expantion is too valuable to be used just for storage.

[sponge]

Yes, FAT16 is 2gig. My CF card is actually formatted for FAT32, so I know it can be done in WinCE. 6GB can be done in FAT32, so I think PDAs will be fine for now, but I'm not too sure how NTFS is with large, single size HDs such as 400gb. This brings me to my next point, what about data integrity? Everything will be magnified a whole lot, no? At least with disc-driven media, in which it's handled often.

[mookie123]

and I still use my Libretto 50CT with 800MB HD.

[Wiggin]

sprinke some of that dust on my SD card and make that 6 gigs and you will get my money. Solid state is where it is at. Microdrives are good for notebooks and occasionaly PPC usage but not full time usage. The CF expantion is too valuable to be used just for storage.

Hear Hear, not to mention the fact the microdrives are a complete power hog which destroys PPC battery life! :icecream:
I have a 1GM microdrive that is collecting dust since I picked up a 256MB SD card to go along with the 128MB card I purchased with my 3850. Would I love the extra MB :?: ... you betcha :lol: but not at the expense of my pathetic battery life.

[Gremmie]

With my gig microdrive now, I barely have time to transfer all the music to fill it all up. But, did anyone ever see the new flash memory being developed by Olympus, called DX (I think)?

[Jonathon Watkins]

With my gig microdrive now, I barely have time to transfer all the music to fill it all up.

USB2 or firewire multi-card readers are the way to go (as soon as they make a USB2 reader :roll:).

The newer 1Gb Microdrives take less juice than the previous generation (170Mb and 340Mb). I must say I am tempted by 6Gb - hopefully the power consumption for these will have dropped again. As long as you charge every day you would be OK - not good for long trips though.

[ThomasC22]

Hear Hear, not to mention the fact the microdrives are a complete power hog which destroys PPC battery life! :icecream:
I have a 1GM microdrive that is collecting dust since I picked up a 256MB SD card to go along with the 128MB card I purchased with my 3850. Would I love the extra MB :?: ... you betcha :lol: but not at the expense of my pathetic battery life.

Exactly what I was thinking. The sad part is that you'll be able to load all your favorite videos on to the Microdrive but won't have any battery power left over to play them :)

[Janak Parekh]

Re battery life: this is why the Compaq CF+ sleeve, with auxiliary battery, is so useful. It increases battery life with the MD tremendously. Plus use a player that supports caching, and you can actually use a MD very well with a PPC.

I had stopped using my MD until I got that, but now my battery lasts forever with or without an MD. The auxiliary battery is also useful for wireless, etc.

--bdj

[ECOslin]

At one time I was buying Desktop Fujitsu HardDrives in 20 Gig sizes. The particular model of Fujitsu drive overall was generic. The setup of the drive from the factory determined whether the drive was 10, 20, or 30 gig.

The same physical piece of hardware could do whatever drive size they wanted to sell at the moment.

I found that out when the drives I had bought in bulk were not setup right and I had to call customer service to get the proper jumper settings. Of course I played around with one to see what I could get.

At this time, I've got no real reason to use a Microdrive, my three 128mb CF cards cover all the pictures I need to take with my Kodak DC280 or text and sound files to feed a hungry Maestro.

Edward

[sponge]

Just because the storage is bigger doesn't mean power will. 100+GB HDs don't require obscene amounts of power to run, right? a 6GB MD would take just as much, if not less, battery life than the 1gb.

[kagayaki1]

Just because the storage is bigger doesn't mean power will. 100+GB HDs don't require obscene amounts of power to run, right? a 6GB MD would take just as much, if not less, battery life than the 1gb.

You have a good point. However, I think the problem lies in the total capacity, rather than the power rate. If we could only put, say, 3 movies on a 1GB before, then surely we could put around 18 on a 6GB, right? The problem comes when we try to play ALL THE CONTENTS. The per minute rate should stay the same (or less), but the total minutes can go way up.

I think some want the same amount of power consumption it took to access the full 1GB to be the same for a 6GB, which would mean far less power consumption. Not going to happen. Most have a good point - if the battery couldn't keep up with the 1GB, why would I want more?

-Jason

[szamot]

In reality, at least for me, it is not about the battery life but form and function. If I need to bring 2 gigs of MP3's I am going on a long trip in which case I bring my car adapter. 256 mb of SD storage is fine, 1 gig would make me happy. Form and function is the key. Ipaq with 256mb card or 1 gig card is still an Ipaq. Ipaq with a sleeve is a brick and at least for me not worth the effort. Besides that the sleeve is usually occupied by a wireless card and even that I find impractical. It has a great WOW value to it when people see it but it is still a brick.

I know what you are going to say get the e740 yeah but then I could not stumble....

[Kati Compton]

You have a good point. However, I think the problem lies in the total capacity, rather than the power rate. If we could only put, say, 3 movies on a 1GB before, then surely we could put around 18 on a 6GB, right? The problem comes when we try to play ALL THE CONTENTS. The per minute rate should stay the same (or less), but the total minutes can go way up.

Not necessarily. Could be that we'll have an AC adapter and wall socket nearby, but not necessarily a computer of our own to sync to. If I could get enough functionality (okay, stuff to play with, music to listen to) into a PDA, I could carry it instead of a laptop in many situations. IE - walking to work, in the car, for short trips where I don't want to carry much baggage, of if I'm already at the airplane carry-on limit (I hate checking luggage) in terms of non-electronic necessities.

More importantly, though, I don't always know what I may want to listen to until it's time to listen, so trying to predict and load up only the 10% of my mp3 collection that I want and that will fit is difficult. I'd like to have 2 GB storage to hold most of my music (okay, maybe not in the highest quality mp3, but good enough for me) and have a wider choice of what to listen to when I'm out away from my desktop and laptop. In this case, the larger storage provides more music *options*, and I wouldn't likely listen to every single song on there before I got back to an outlet. I certainly wouldn't be expecting that battery life had to scale with storage size! (Not that I'd mind...!)

I'd like battery capacity to increase as quickly as possible, and I certainly don't think that the capacity of flash cards/microdrives should be held back to "keep pace" - on the contrary. They should also increase capacity as quickly as possible. For my use, I would like large storage cards whose contents would stay fairly constant, and would be the stuff I regularly want to have with me. I don't want to have to sync every time I go out to customize for the particular trip. I'd also like these cards to not tax the battery power any more than necessary (ie, CF vs MD).

I'll probably just get a 512MB CF when I get my new PocketPC in the next month or so, and more if they get cheaper or when I can afford it.

[seanturner]

Doesn't anyone remember the pixie dust scandle where people used the IBM drives in servers and found that the Pixie Dust brings the recomended operating time down to something like 200 hours per month and drivers started crashing... Have the fixed the problem since then?

[seanturner]

Oh, I think they might ahve used AFC media as another name for pixie dust.

[DavidHorn]

You think?

My Pocket PC is protected with the high-tech equivelant of cat's wee.

[don dre]

The newer 2Gb Microdrives take less juice than the previous generation. I must say I am tempted by 6Gb. As long as you charge every day you would be OK - not good for long trips though
Gerbil, where did you hear such news?

[Jonathon Watkins]

It was a typo Don Dre - I have updated the post. I was talking about he differnce between the 170/340Mb generation of drives and the 1Gb drive which takes less power. They seem to take less power each time a new generation of devices is released - a good trend!