Hitachi 4GB Microdrive

In December 2002 Hitachi bought IBM's disk drive business and formed the Hitachi Global Storage Technologies company. In addition to the desktop and laptop hard drives, Hitachi will also be producing the popular 1-inch Microdrive. The largest Microdrive that IBM produced held 1 gigabyte of data. The CompactFlash Type II form factor Microdrive is extremely popular in high resolution digital cameras, PDAs and MP3 players.

The Hitachi 4GB Microdrive will use a newly designed read-write head that is half the size of the current one. This equates to a 40% decrease in the height at which it travels over the disk platter. Other significant technical achievements include a data transfer rate increase that represents a 50 percent improvement from the previous-generation Microdrive. Hitachi engineers estimate that the new data transfer rates are faster than all competitive solid-state data storage products available today.

The areal density of the 4GB Microdrive is made possible by using a new five-layer version of Hitachi's patented "Pixie Dust" media technology. This data storage breakthrough is achieved by taking a three-atom-thick layer of the element ruthenium, a precious metal similar to platinum, and sandwiching it between three magnetic layers. Technically referred to as antiferromagnetically coupled media, the ruthenium/magnetic layers enable data recording at ultra-high densities while maintaining data integrity.

The 4GB Microdrive will have a 50% increased data transfer rate.





The 512MB or 1GB Microdrive can be used in most digital cameras equipped with a CompactFlash Type II slot or a PC ATA Type II card slot.  It can also be used in PDAs, laptops or PC systems with PCMCIA card slots.

The 4GB Microdrive is going to need a camera or device that is compatible with the FAT-32 file system to access its capacity beyond 2GB.

(Note: It can *not* be used in digital cameras that have only a single CompactFlash Type I slot.  Even though a camera has a CompactFlash Type II card slot that does not necessarily mean that it is Microdrive compatible.)

   A 1GB hard drive in the same size case as a solid state CompactFlash card.

The Microdrive is the perfect image storage device for dSLR cameras like the Nikon D1X, Nikon D100, Canon EOS D30, EOS D60 or EOS 10D and lets you store hundreds of high-quality JPEGs or raw images.

Partial List of Cameras That Can Use The Microdrive

Canon Pro 70
Canon Pro 90 IS
Canon Powershot G3
Canon Powershot G5
Canon Powershot S45
Canon Powershot S50
Canon EOS-1D
Canon EOS D60
Canon EOS D30
Casio QV2000UX
Casio QV4000
Casio QV-5700
Fuji S1 Pro
Fuji S602 Zoom
Fuji S7000 Zoom
Kodak Professional DCS 620
Kodak Professional DCS 760
Minolta DiMAGE 5
Minolta DiMAGE A1
Minolta RD3000
Nikon Coolpix 995
Nikon Coolpix 5000
Nikon Coolpix 5700
Nikon D1
Nikon D1H
Nikon D100
Olympus E-1
Olympus E-20
Sony DSC-F828