Miniature Hard Drives
The LifeDrive is really two devices in one, and it has 4 GB of inbuilt storage. This was huge for a handheld in 2005. It's by far the biggest inbuilt capacity for a personal digital assistant ever released. But this can also be used as an external USB pocket hard drive. The
LifeDrive runs PalmOS. With a full suite of inbuilt apps. Including interestingly a Dialer and even an SMS app. But make no mistake, this is not a phone. These functions were intended for connecting to your phone via Bluetooth. When I look at that Dialer though, how could they have not wanted to make a phone into this form factor? Today I want to go inside and see that hard drive firsthand. So let's get straight into taking this apart. It's just a couple of screws, some clips, and the metal back plate comes straight off.
And there it is! a tiny mechanical hard drive known simply as the Microdrive. I'd better disconnect and remove that battery, so I don't get any unexpected problems. Under the Microdrive, there's the Intel CPU that runs this thing. I want to get this drive out of here and run some tests on it. So it's time to breach that warranty seal. There I've done it, there's no going back now. I now need to very carefully unplug the cable from the drive. Looking at that main board and LCD module, this is all very mid 2000s tech. The Microdrive was designed to fit exactly into the form factor of
a Compact Flash card. For examining this drive and some of the others that I have, I'll be using my Sony VAIO UX. Because it already has a built-in Compact Flashcard slot and it's really cool and deserves more screen time. I can hear the drive spinning up. But it's not being detected. While I'm a bit disappointed by this outcome, I was also kind of expecting it. I had very similar problems in the recent Sony CLIE video. In which I tested two other Microdrives that I have. In that video the Hitachi drive worked fine, but the Seagate drive
had this same problem. So the question is, if the drives are working fine, such as when inside the LifeDrive, why don't they work in other devices? And the answer is it's because of something that happened with digital cameras and professional photographers in the early to mid 2000s. This all starts back in 1999 when IBM developed the first Microdrives. They were designed from the outset as an alternative option to Compact Flash memory cards. Flash memory chips were
very expensive at the time. Microdrives could be manufactured at a cheaper price and they had a higher capacity. And in many cases they were also faster than Compact Flash cards. This dominance over flash continued for many years during the early 2000s. With Microdrives easily out competing flash memory in the larger sized capacities. We can see that a Sand Disk 1 GB Compact Flash card
was priced at $300. But the same 1 GB capacity as a Microdrive was 200. By the end of 2003, IBM had sold off their hard drive division to Hitachi. Who then brought out a 2 GB and the new huge 4 GB Microdrive to market, under the Hatachi brand. With the 4 GB Microdrive priced at $499. Compare this to the first 4 GB Compact Flash memory cards from Lexar. Released about the same time as the Hitachi Microdrive. But it had a retail price of $1,499.
These cards were mostly being bought by professional photographers. Who could easily fill a 1 GB card with 150 high quality Raw photos in just a couple of hours. For this market segment, card capacity was important. And the Microdrive was king of price and performance. But these new 4 GB Microdrives didn't just catch the eye of photographers. Their ability was also
noticed by manufacturers of MP3 players. There was an opportunity here to build the first high capacity but small form factor MP3 players. The first to come to market with a player was Creative Labs with their MuVo 2 model in December 2003. And in a weird twist of fate that I can't explain, these small 4 GB players came to market before the standalone 4 GB drives were available to buy separately. And in another even weirder twist, the MuVo 2 player was priced at only $200. Compare that to the retail 4 GB Microdrive which was announced at $499. Photographers waiting for the 4 GB Drive, immediately asked the question: If This MP3 player contains a 4 GB Microdrive, and it's $300 cheaper to buy the MP3 player, and it's available right now, why don't I just get one of those and get the drive out of it? The first mention I can find of this happening is from Andy Mack. Who took on the risk and did just this. He then wrote about it on his blog and the floodgates
opened. The news quickly hit the photography forums. Photographers started buying up 4 GB MP3 players on masse, to pull Microdrives out of them. It was mayhem in the market. People started posting articles about other brands of MP3 players that were coming out from other manufacturers. and could also be gutted to get their drives out. It was a wild feeding frenzy. But then something
changed these MP3 players started coming out with Microdrives in them, that would no longer work in cameras. Apple had also just brought out the iPod Mini. Which had a Microdrive inside. They even put an Apple logo directly on the hard drive itself, and you can be sure these also don't work in digital cameras. When all the original batches of these early MP3 players were sold out, the frenzy was over. Photographers that wanted high capacity drives had no choice but to buy the $499 retail 4 GB Microdrives. So how did Hitachi and Seagate and some of the other brands that sold Microdrives stop these from working in cameras. It all comes down to the original Compact Flash specifications.
Which includes two separate interfaces for accessing cards. There's the Compact Flash protocol itself. Which is related to PCMCIA or PC card slots in laptops. And there's also a parallel ATA IDE protocol. More commonly used in hard drives. Both of these interfaces have always been present in Compact Flash memory cards, and even continue to this day. But they tended to be used for different purposes. With cameras and PDAs, such as the CLIE and the Compact Flash slot in this VAIO, all using the standard Compact Flash interface. While MP3 players and any other
devices that used embedded Compact Flash cards or Microdrives, would typically only use the IDE interface. So to stop embedded Microdrives from being extracted from products and used elsewhere, drive manufacturers simply removed the Compact Flash protocol from the firmware in Microdrives. They created two distinct product lines. This meant they could no longer have the
Compact Flash logo printed on the embedded drives. But that didn't matter. Since they were always inside products. And wouldn't, or shouldn't ever be seen by the outside world. Which is why I've decided to take apart as many devices as I can find, to see what sort of drives they use. I have this Creative Labs MP3 player from 2004. It's a Zen Micro. Though it says 6 GB on the back. So I suspect it's a later revision of this player. Now I don't know if this player even works. Because I didn't get a battery with it. And plugging in
the charger does nothing. Probably because the player is expecting to see a battery and refuses to power up without it. But I want to find out if at least the Microdrive works. This player is so solid in construction, it feels so different from the Creative Zen 5 Plus shown in the previous video. First there are two hidden screws under the top cover. Then I just need to carefully unlatch and unclip each section. The insides continue to show how well made this is. With its metal cage and more clips to undo. I have to get that main board out, while being quite careful. Because I don't want to break anything.
There it is! We can see it in there it's a Seagate 6 GB Microdrive just sitting there. Let's get this out and have a closer look. OK, there it is, and it does indeed say embedded use only on the back. I'm not going to let that stop me from testing it though. I'm also noting there's a nice big RAM chip on the back of this main board. These hard drive players would typically load
a song into RAM and then shut the drive down to save power as the music played. Testing the drive in my VAIO, and as expected from the embedded label on this drive, it doesn't get detected using it in the built-in Compact Flash slot. So I've got something else here to use. It's a Compact Flash slot to standard parallel IDE hard drive adapter board. I also have a USB to IDE hard drive interface. I just need to connect these two adapters together. include a drive power cable.
And now I can power this up and see what happens. And there it goes. The embedded Microdrive is being detected, and it looks like it's all working fine. Which means the Creative Zen Micro probably also works fine and just needs a battery. I'm also testing the 4 GB Microdrive from the Palm
LifeDrive. I already knew this drive was working from using it in the LifeDrive. But now I can see this drive contains two partitions. The LifeDrive stores its entire firmware operating system on one of the partitions. With the other partition being used for main storage. It looks like this
drive is also in great condition. I also ran some tests on some of my external USB Compact Flashcard readers and found for the most part they don't detect any of these embedded Microdrives. But I do have a couple of these smaller USB Compact Flash card readers. Somehow they are able to
interface to these embedded Microdrives. I can read and write files to these drives and they seem to be working fine. And they contain a single chip inside. It's a GL834 card reader IC. Having a look at the chip specifications and there's no mention of these using an IDE mode.
But they must be using the IDE interface. I have no other explanation for what could be going on here with these. But they are a good easy way to check embedded Microdrives. Though I have one more MP3 player that I want to have a look at. It's an iRiver E10. On the back it says HDD jukebox and 6 GB. So I think this must contain a Microdrive. I also don't know if this player works,
because I didn't get the USB charging cable with this. And the player uses a proprietary connector. So I'm going to take this apart and check it from the inside out. This player was released in 2006. That was the year flash memory prices began rapidly dropping, and was starting to become much more competitive with Microdrive memory prices. So I'm very interested to see what we've got in here. And there we go. Sitting covered by conductive mesh tape and with rubber all around,
there is the Microdrive. But this one is quite different. Look at that connector. That's not a standard Compact Flash card connector at all. This is going to be a very different sort of Microdrive indeed. I want to see exactly what type of drive this is. So I'm removing all the conductive tape. And there it is, it's a 6 GB Hitachi Microdrive. And wow this is so much smaller when comparing it's size to a Compact Flash style Microdrive. With the Compact Flash interface having already been removed, there likely wasn't any reason to keep building these with Compact Flash card connectors on them. It became easier to just put a small ribbon cable connector and
shrink them down. I believe this is still an IDE interface though. If only I had some other way to connect an IDE interface to this drive. I'd be able to test it directly and see if it works. But at least I can charge the player's battery now using an external charger. Then see if the
player itself will power up and test the drive that way. These things are a real fire hazard. The protocol is always safety first. Doing a quick reassembly and the player seems to work fine. If I can find a charging cable for this then I've got a working Microdrive MP3 player. I also have another Microdrive that I want to test. It's this 4 GB Hitachi that I removed from a Sharp Zaurus Linux computer in a video last year. Despite being intended as an embedded drive,
it works fine in Compact Flash slots and readers. I'm pleased that I have at least one of the early embedded drives, with the full Compact Flash firmware installed. This must have come from those early months of 2004, during the frenzy. I then set about doing some extensive testing on all these Microdrives. I want to get a good idea of condition, including reading their Smart
Health parameters that all drives have these days. Interestingly when I tested any drives using my working USB card readers, even though the drive works fine with them, I can't read any Smart parameter information out of the drive. I have no idea what's going on with these card readers. Back to the full IDE interfaces and the test results are in. And I'm pleased to report they all work well except for one. It's this 6 GB full retail Hitachi drive. It spins up but it doesn't seem to work. I did extensive testing and I believe it's because it has a faulty mechanism. Or maybe a faulty controller board. I don't think this drive is ever going to work again. Which
leaves me with only one thing left to do, and to take this apart and see the mechanism firsthand. I have taken one of these Microdrives apart before. That was a very long time ago and it stopped working very quickly afterwards. So I'm extremely keen to do this again. Oh, there's a hidden screw under the label. OK, that makes five screws.
OK, there's the controller board. I'm reattaching the controller to the drive so I can power It up when it's open. Taking off this silver sticker and it looks like I've now breached the seal. I just need to remove these screws and get this plate off. OK, there it is, wow that mechanism is tiny, and it's beautiful. This is a true marvel of engineering.
There's the 1-inch platter spinning at 3,600 RPM, and that tiny actuator arm. That is somehow able to record and read multi- gigabytes of information onto that tiny spinning disc. All this quickly became obsolete with the rapid drop in flash memory prices, that began happening in 2006. The Microdrive was pretty much wiped out the following year, and soon became a relic of the past. Though while researching for this video, I found out from reading the awesome HD Tech DAT website, there was also a Microdrive revival in 2008. When Samsung brought out both a 30 GB and a
40 GB Microdrive. Called the Samsung Spinpoint A1. They used a slightly bigger platter size at 1.3 inch. And they had the ribbon cable style interface. Making them overall about the same size as the original Compact Flash Microdrive. They were only used in a few products though, a couple of USB storage devices and a JVC camcorder. Flash memory was just becoming too competitive to keep these tiny drives going. That's the story of the Microdrive and how it rose to fame with
the world of cameras and photography. And was quickly gobbled up by MP3 players. Before finally hitting its peak in 2005, as it helped to create the amazing PalmOne LifeDrive. And then these drives disappeared and faded into history. What a journey for a marvelous piece of technology.
2025-02-13 05:36
