Seagate 5G CF drives

[cmr164]

"The new 1-inch products will be available in the third quarter as part of Seagate's largest ever product portfolio expansion, the company said. Exact prices were not disclosed, but Seagate spokesman John Paulsen said the 5-gigabyte compact flash card and USB external drive will each cost less than $200."

News article (http://www.masslive.com/newsflash/technology/index.ssf?/base/business-2/1087163955323720.xml)

[patch29]

I prefer solid state card to microdrives but I might have to take a look at getting a couple of those if the price really is that low, too cheap to pass up when you need a lot of storage.

[philspace]

I just had my second microdrive (in three years - not too bad) go south while making some rather interesting noises.:(:

I looked at the Seagate and Hitachi options, and decided to go for one of the high performance CF cards instead. Did some time trials both on my Digital Rebel and a USB 2.0 PC - a standard Sandisk 1GB CF vs. a Sandisk Ultra II 1GB moving 45 images. 1/3 of the time on writes to the Ultra card vs. the standard so I'm sticking with no moving parts - better on the motorcycle too :evil

I also noticed about a 50 percent reduction in the time it takes to right out the four images when the camera is in continuos mode - I'm happy now that I have found a faster CF card, it will be a while before I go back to a microdrive format card.

[DoctorIt]

5 gig for under $200... i would like to hope CF will continue to get cheaper and cheaper like that, but I'm with phil, kinda weary of tiny moving parts.

[patch29]

5 gig for under $200... i would like to hope CF will continue to get cheaper and cheaper like that, but I'm with phil, kinda weary of tiny moving parts.

For a motorcycle and vibes, I would worry and stay solid-state, but for some extra cheap storage. I would add a couple for back up or really big days. It also depends on what size files you are shooting my camera gets just over 100 shots/gb so cards go really quickly at 8fps. I would also hope that the price would help to reduce the cost of CF cards.

[DoctorIt]

For a motorcycle and vibes, I would worry and stay solid-state, but for some extra cheap storage. I would add a couple for back up or really big days. It also depends on what size files you are shooting my camera gets just over 100 shots/gb so cards go really quickly at 8fps. I would also hope that the price would help to reduce the cost of CF cards.Agreed, kinda what i meant to say... i also hope this will bring down price of CF.

[mercphoto]

kinda weary of tiny moving parts.
No kidding. I had a friend's old microdrive (340G, quite old) for a couple days. I was afraid to hold the thing.

What is most amazing to me about microdrives is this. Over the past 20 years hard disk drives have had a faster miniaturization curve than semiconductors have!