Microdrive – is not a flash memory yet, but not a hard drive already

While reading a description of multi-card reader  you notice the main supported CF I, CF II, MD standards, here first two are quite clear, especially after review CompactFlash, as for MicroDrive – here everything is particular.
Tiny hard drive resembles a flash card. Hard disk - a device demanding the gentle reference! It is sensitive to any unexpected voltage swings, shake-ups and impacts. So, let’s look how can we solve these problems?

Of course there are many obvious advantages of using these tiny hard drives – price and capacity. No other product on the market can offer a better combination of storage capacity, portability, compact size, performance and affordability. You can find 6Gb and even 8Gb models now. CompactFlash of such size and capacity are rather expensive.

We were lucky to get on testing a Hitachi Microdrive HMS360606 D5 CF00
with 6Gb capacity. We have decided to make a close look - whether this format has a light future or not!

First contact

When I held this Microdrive from Hitachi in my hands a sensation that it is a small chocolate did not leave me. Only iron surface and something rattling inside proved that was a hard drive. Device is not so frail as you think – it is impossible to break it without hammer, even CompactFlash cards in plastic cases will be less stronger.

This 6GB Microdrive provides vast, reliable storage for data, photos, music and videos, when inserted into compatible flash card slots in digital cameras, PDAs, handheld PCs, MP3 digital audio players, laptops and other portable digital devices.

General specifications I have found you may read here Hitachi, please open "Microdriver":

As we see here, real speed of microdrive depends on interface. Using of slots directly connected to IDE - possible to achieve quite a good media transfer rate - up to 9 Mb/sec, because as for USB-controller of any card reader it limits speed to 4-7 Mb/sec. In comperison with Hitachi Microdrive 3 K4-2 about 2Gb, which was tested two years ago (please look «Hitachi Microdrive 3K4-2», the speed increased double.

Besides, this tiny hard disk possesses of a high stability to any vibration and impacts and can easy maintain 300000 operations of heads parking. A secret of such survivability - technology Load/Unload!

Instead of Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology has come Load/Unload. Before, reading heads parked directly on a surface of a plate, but now they placed on a special ramp. Even at unexpected failure of energy submission a contact with a disk is impossible: spindle’s residual rotation transforms to a current - quite enough for heads parking.

Due to all these characteristics we can say with confidence that Microdrive Hitachi is an excellent memory card and a perfect replacement of Compact Flash. But, as you know every magnetic drive is very sensitive to static pressure and especially to strong magnetic fields, whereas flash-memory is not receptive to such influences at all.

Let's leave this issue what to choose and give the customers free hand! So, let’s start to test it.

Microdrive

In testing we will use the following system:

• Sempron 2400+;
• DIMM PC2700, 512 Mb;
• Asus A7N8X-X;
• nForce 2 v.44.07;
• HDD Seagate ST380011A (80 Gb, 7200 rpm, Ultra-ATA 100);
• ОС Windows XP SP1

Aslo in testing we used two card readers: the main – Transcend 7-in-1,
monitoring device – MC Corp 23-in-1. We have already used them in of multi card readers testing.

We used a test package Aida32 to define a character, to measure operating speed of the card and average time of access.

By means of Iometer v. 2004.07.30 we shall define microdrive's speeds with data of different size in 4 modes.

Real tests will be lead by means of FC-Test program. We shall define speed of copying of 100 files each 1 Mb, 10 files each 10 Mb and 1 file about 100 Mb.

AIDA32

Test has shown that card reader’s speed brings to nothing all characteristics declared before. It is known, that at linear reading there is a "step" schedule on which speed of internal paths is maximum and speed of external – doubled low.  We managed to receive only this schedule, even using of the fastest card reader:

Direct line is up to 85 % - max speed. As a result, the average index - 4,48 Mb/sec. With Transcend – parameters are lower - 4,9 Mb/sec.

The most interesting, among of all parameters we have got, was the time of access - 22,5 ms, almost twice above declared one – due to card reader’s influence. Linear write speed was limited - 2,63 Mb/sec, casual read speed - 3,94 Mb/sec, casual write speed - 2,42 Mb/sec.

Iometer

Testing results are in table, here. Third column - results showed by memory card CF Kingston Elite Pro 50x (please look «Universal Card Readers -Turtle Race», with Transcend)

Microdrive has the same linear read speed as flash memory, but the write speed is twice worse. But it so, data are well correlated with Aida32 results.

 We have got difference in time of access on casual read speed  of flash (nearby 1 мs) and microdrive (22 мs). As for casual write - for so slow result here is definitely guilty card reader.

FC-Test

Card reader, which we used, limited the speed of Hitachi, but the results of synthetic and practical tests, at the same time, are very close.

Received results showed the same picture, as all previous tests. Media transfer rate is the same as CF-cards on average level have. Here, casual read speed and write speed were slow - these low parameters are caused of card reader’s restrictions.

Conclusion

When a maximum capacity comes first to you among of all requirements - in this case Hitachi Microdrive 6Gb - will be the best choice! Excellent to professional photographers working with a great amount of high-quality images! You can use this tiny hard disk everywhere you wish. In addition, such Microdrives are widely used in modern players and personal mediacenters. Hitachi Microdrive 6Gb has a high endurance and in using does not differ from CompactFlash card. Attention! Strong electromagnetic fields are harmful to Microdrive so, simply use a special protective package.