Ken Tanaka
December 11th, 2002, 05:28 PM
I've just received one of WiebeTech's new MicroGB+ Firewire drives and can't seem to lift my jaw. Here's a 40Gb 5400rpm drive smaller than their previous MicroGB drives (which also astonished me) and even smaller than a deck of cards for $270!
I'm old enough to remember removable "disk packs" the size of cakes with capacities in the 10-50Mb range that fit into $50,000 washing-machine-sized drives connected to computers that usually had (much) less than 1Mb of memory. It's absolutely astonishing what the mass storage industry has accomplished during the past 30 years.
Sorry, I couldn't help expressing this amazement publicly.
Adrian Douglas
December 11th, 2002, 07:12 PM
To top that off Ken, they are going to get smaller and faster with more storage very soon. The stuff that's being worked on here in Japan will blow your jaw clean into orbit.
Robert Knecht Schmidt
December 11th, 2002, 07:15 PM
Just a few years ago everybody was holding off buying a 1 GB jaz drive because we all heard that ORB drives were just around the corner.
(I'm stuck with a jaz drive and a bunch of expensive and bulky jaz media...)
Rob Lohman
December 12th, 2002, 07:54 AM
Very sweet indeed. I think it would be time to mount these
tiny harddisks directly to cameras. Would love to have swapable
harddisk support on my XL1s without any other external devices
and batteries etc... Oh well
Ken Tanaka
December 12th, 2002, 10:48 AM
Rob,
Indeed, Sony just introduced this feature to their 370 and 570 series cameras. I certainly think it's do-able, although the XL1s' price-point might make it a bit of a challenge.
Rob Lohman
December 13th, 2002, 05:00 AM
I don't know Ken. I think an drive interface would actually be
cheaper then a whole tape assembly! They wouldn't have to
include a drive if they didn't want to. Would be sweet if they
did (but then I don't want something small like a 5 GB drive
ofcourse)
Steve Leone
January 12th, 2003, 12:04 PM
believe it or not I just saw Maxstor 60 gig / 7200RPM firewire drive for $149 after factory rebate...
Mark Austin
January 12th, 2003, 12:34 PM
Are the drives available now? Do you know where to get one?
Thanks,
Mark
Ken Tanaka
January 12th, 2003, 01:06 PM
Mark,
If you're referring to the WiebeTech MicroGB+ drives, yes they certainly are available now from WiebeTech (http://www.wiebetech.com/).
If you're referring to Sony's hard disk recorders, yes they are also available now. See the page on the Sony DVCAM site (http://www.sonyusadvcam.com/content/article_12.shtml).
Steve Leone
January 12th, 2003, 01:32 PM
believe it or not, I saw the Maxstor ad on a newspaper flyer for one of the big box stores.....maybe Staples, or Best buy.....sorry, not sure which