1
00:00:00,199 --> 00:00:06,680
did you know that there were digital cameras that took floppy discs for

2
00:00:03,760 --> 00:00:11,920
storage pretty cool right well yes but also terrible since each of these can

3
00:00:09,760 --> 00:00:15,360
only hold a handful of low resolution images at a time and carrying around a

4
00:00:13,880 --> 00:00:19,480
whole Rolodex of them with you while you're out taking pictures not very

5
00:00:17,359 --> 00:00:23,439
practical but what choice did we have flash media as we know it today wouldn't

6
00:00:21,480 --> 00:00:30,240
be able to cost effectively store thousands or even hundreds of files on

7
00:00:26,119 --> 00:00:35,040
one card for at least another decade but

8
00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:37,480
what if we could get this into this well

9
00:00:35,040 --> 00:00:45,200
believe it or not that's exactly what IBM did introducing the Micro Drive a

10
00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:50,879
tiny spinning hard drive that changed both hobbyist photography and consumer

11
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:54,039
electronics forever just like this video

12
00:00:50,879 --> 00:00:56,760
changed our sponsor the ridge meet your

13
00:00:54,039 --> 00:01:00,199
new everyday carry the ridge wallet made with premium quality materials the ridge

14
00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:04,080
wallet will surely replace your old bulky wallet I know it has mine check

15
00:01:02,359 --> 00:01:08,240
out the link below and use code Linus to save 10% off your purchase and get free

16
00:01:14,840 --> 00:01:20,280
shipping let me set the stage it was the

17
00:01:17,840 --> 00:01:24,079
mid90s and compact flash was becoming the deao standard for storage in the

18
00:01:22,079 --> 00:01:28,840
emerging world of digital photography and why not compact flash offered strong

19
00:01:26,920 --> 00:01:32,560
performance for the time and enjoyed widespread compatibility

20
00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:37,680
all without SanDisk needing to sell a single card reader wait what okay so

21
00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:43,399
here's how they did that the interface used a 50 pin subset of the 68 pin

22
00:01:41,159 --> 00:01:49,680
pcmcia connector that was common on laptop computers throughout the '90s and

23
00:01:45,560 --> 00:01:51,439
into the early 2000s pcmcia cards or PC

24
00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:54,920
cards as they'd eventually be renamed because no one could remember what the

25
00:01:52,719 --> 00:01:59,920
acronym stood for anyway were typically used to add additional IO to a laptop

26
00:01:58,119 --> 00:02:05,079
but realistically they could be used used for pretty much anything including

27
00:02:02,159 --> 00:02:10,879
storage so by designing the compact flash card to be pin compatible with PCM

28
00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:15,319
CIA and then bundling an inexpensive adapter sled in the Box SanDisk could be

29
00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:19,959
sure that pretty much anyone with a laptop could read their card format

30
00:02:17,760 --> 00:02:24,400
remember this was all happening before USB came along in

31
00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:29,360
1996 and even Apple power books of the era included pcmcia slots Apple's

32
00:02:27,319 --> 00:02:32,920
allergy to expansion evidently hadn't developed yet

33
00:02:30,440 --> 00:02:38,080
the only thing holding CF back was the price of the media functional flash

34
00:02:35,360 --> 00:02:44,000
storage in general was only 2 years old when CF was introduced and it took until

35
00:02:40,319 --> 00:02:47,440
1998 for SanDisk to offer a 24 megabyte

36
00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:49,959
CF card for context in that same year

37
00:02:47,440 --> 00:02:56,680
the Canon PowerShot Pro 70 shot uncompressed raw images that took up 1.9

38
00:02:53,400 --> 00:02:58,440
mbes each yikes I think you can see

39
00:02:56,680 --> 00:03:03,000
where this is going because it's obvious that IBM couldn't have picked a better

40
00:03:00,200 --> 00:03:07,799
time to introduce the Micro Drive the First Generation Micro Drive released in

41
00:03:04,959 --> 00:03:15,280
1999 would store more than 80 of those same images in its 170 MB capacity or

42
00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:17,760
almost 180 in the 340 MB version

43
00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:23,040
suddenly digital photography had an actual advantage over the 24 to 36

44
00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:27,440
exposures you could get with a role of film especially when you factor in that

45
00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:32,319
you could review and delete your images right on the camera to clear up space

46
00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:36,519
and at just $500 for the 340 megab version this convenience was Within

47
00:03:34,159 --> 00:03:43,319
Reach for prosumers and enthusiasts alike which sounds crazy $150 a megabyte

48
00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:49,120
but you got to consider that compared to the $2.50 a megabyte that you'd pay for

49
00:03:46,319 --> 00:03:54,840
an 80 Meg compact flash card that was a heck of a deal now IBM's pricing

50
00:03:51,840 --> 00:03:57,040
Advantage seems unintuitive to us today

51
00:03:54,840 --> 00:04:01,439
a whole complex mechanical device in here what but because hard drive

52
00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:05,879
technology was already so mature compared to flash it was just a matter

53
00:04:03,760 --> 00:04:12,040
of figuring out how to make the part small enough to fit in the CF form

54
00:04:08,280 --> 00:04:15,879
factor which shockingly they did the

55
00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:18,880
tiny platter spun at 4500 RPM with an

56
00:04:15,879 --> 00:04:20,799
average seek time of 15 milliseconds and

57
00:04:18,880 --> 00:04:24,320
rather than running full time and blowing through your camera's battery

58
00:04:22,479 --> 00:04:28,880
they would operate more like a floppy Drive spinning up and down as needed

59
00:04:27,400 --> 00:04:34,600
having successfully Shrunk the drive down to 1 in then then all IBM had to do

60
00:04:31,280 --> 00:04:36,919
next was increase capacity the very next

61
00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:40,960
year we got the aptly named second generation of micro drives IBM really is

62
00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:46,880
a lot better at engineering than branding anyway the 512 megabyte Drive

63
00:04:44,520 --> 00:04:52,560
was available for $4 and the unbelievable 1 GB Drive which I'm

64
00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:56,360
holding in my hand was just 500 less

65
00:04:52,560 --> 00:04:58,960
than 50 cents a Meg that was even a real

66
00:04:56,360 --> 00:05:02,919
1,24 Meg Gigabyte by the way not the 1,000 megabyte gigs that hard drive

67
00:05:01,199 --> 00:05:09,479
manufacturers have adopted in modern times the year 2000 also saw solidstate

68
00:05:06,039 --> 00:05:12,120
compact flash reach 256 megabytes quite

69
00:05:09,479 --> 00:05:17,560
the Milestone but the issue was the cost at almost eight times as much per Meg

70
00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:23,840
now the Second Generation Micro drives and most of the ones that followed spun

71
00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:25,680
span at 3600 RPM but they still managed

72
00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:31,280
to maintain the same average seek time of 15 milliseconds at least on paper we

73
00:05:28,840 --> 00:05:35,080
got our hands on a 1 gbyte specimen but the years haven't been particularly kind

74
00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:38,960
to this one after some coaxing we were at least able to get through two passes

75
00:05:36,720 --> 00:05:43,240
of each read test and Crystal dis Mark but we managed only 4.4 megabytes per

76
00:05:41,319 --> 00:05:47,000
second in sequential reads with some other fairly unimpressive numbers and

77
00:05:45,400 --> 00:05:53,880
sometimes where it would just stay at zero so I think it's safe to say um y 2K

78
00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:56,039
got it and move on now in 2001 you could

79
00:05:53,880 --> 00:06:00,319
get a First Generation Micro Drive for free thanks to Canon bundling the lower

80
00:05:58,600 --> 00:06:04,759
capacity micro drives in with some of their high-end cameras IBM themselves

81
00:06:03,039 --> 00:06:09,960
further reduced costs getting them down to just over 30 cents per megabyte for

82
00:06:07,039 --> 00:06:15,759
the second gen drives and 2001 saw the first competition with I Omega releasing

83
00:06:12,639 --> 00:06:17,919
a 340 megabyte drive and announcing a 1

84
00:06:15,759 --> 00:06:22,199
Gigabyte drive now their prices were a couple years behind IBM but with more

85
00:06:20,199 --> 00:06:25,919
Fighters entering the ring surely Innovation would follow and the future

86
00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:30,160
for Micro Drive would be bright and for a while it seemed that way it was around

87
00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:34,560
that time that IBM's storage technology division was acquired by Hitachi and the

88
00:06:32,639 --> 00:06:38,520
new Hitachi division took over the development of the Micro Drive

89
00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:45,560
announcing two and four Gigabyte models to be released in 2004 and a 6 gab in

90
00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:47,840
2005 with prices as low as 4 cents a

91
00:06:45,560 --> 00:06:52,000
megabyte we tested one of these 2 GB models and honestly it mostly just made

92
00:06:50,520 --> 00:06:57,039
us feel better about our results with the 1 gig it managed only four to 5

93
00:06:54,599 --> 00:07:02,360
megabytes per second reads and just 2 megabytes per second rights with random

94
00:06:59,599 --> 00:07:07,039
reads and writes all pretty poor around3 megab per second across the board of

95
00:07:04,840 --> 00:07:12,560
course randoms don't matter though because these aren't made to run an

96
00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:15,280
operating system anyway or were they

97
00:07:12,560 --> 00:07:19,800
we'll get to that later first up the mid 20000s saw both Seagate and Western

98
00:07:18,039 --> 00:07:23,960
Digital get into the Micro Drive Market with various storage capacities

99
00:07:21,840 --> 00:07:28,360
seagate's drives notably found their way into the iPod mini oh I guess we're

100
00:07:26,599 --> 00:07:34,000
getting to that now then along with hitachi's drives released in 2004 the

101
00:07:31,879 --> 00:07:39,800
iPod mini was the little brother of the original iPod and used a micro drive to

102
00:07:36,599 --> 00:07:42,120
cram 4 gigabyt of music into its smaller

103
00:07:39,800 --> 00:07:46,680
form factor which started the trend of the ever shrinking iPod while helping

104
00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:52,639
the iPod family to more than double it sales in 2004 and then jump through the

105
00:07:49,240 --> 00:07:54,840
roof in 2005 with the addition of a 6 GB

106
00:07:52,639 --> 00:08:00,240
model and the introduction of the even smaller Nano which was the first iPod to

107
00:07:57,520 --> 00:08:04,360
use flash memory throughout the mid 000s other manufacturers would include micro

108
00:08:02,159 --> 00:08:09,280
drives in various media players and even a couple of pdas like Palm's life drive

109
00:08:07,199 --> 00:08:15,000
but none of them had the longevity or the cultural impact of the iPod in our

110
00:08:12,319 --> 00:08:18,759
testing the 6 GB Seagate Drive was a significant improvement over previous

111
00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:22,280
generations with sequential reads of up to 9 megabytes a second and rights of up

112
00:08:21,400 --> 00:08:27,759
to 7.74 random read performance though fell

113
00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:33,279
off slightly and random rights only managed about 60% of what we saw before

114
00:08:30,639 --> 00:08:37,120
this was definitely not a device to do a lot of random writing to but it was more

115
00:08:35,399 --> 00:08:42,000
than enough to handle the lightweight iPod system software at the time and the

116
00:08:39,640 --> 00:08:47,720
limited user input courtesy of the wheel interface so things still looked like

117
00:08:43,680 --> 00:08:49,760
they were going pretty well but by 2007

118
00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:54,440
after its short time in the light Micro Drive was already riding off into the

119
00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:58,839
sunset flash-based CF cards had caught up in capacity 8 gig cards were becoming

120
00:08:57,080 --> 00:09:03,640
commercially available taking away any capacity advantage and prices

121
00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:08,320
particularly of lower capacity flash-based competitors were dropping

122
00:09:05,880 --> 00:09:12,760
rapidly thanks to Moore's Law which was alive and well at the time 2 gig compact

123
00:09:11,240 --> 00:09:17,600
flash cards were selling for as little as 30 bucks meaning that there was no

124
00:09:15,120 --> 00:09:20,720
longer any reason to have a tiny platter of metal spinning at thousands of

125
00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:25,360
revolutions per minute inside your portable device transfer speeds were

126
00:09:23,040 --> 00:09:30,079
also up with minimum requirements for new standards of compact flash calling

127
00:09:27,200 --> 00:09:35,360
for at least 10 megabytes per second easily matching the performance of our

128
00:09:31,760 --> 00:09:36,720
final sample an 8 GB drive from Seagate

129
00:09:35,360 --> 00:09:40,279
now if you're anything like me you're probably dying to take a look inside one

130
00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:43,680
of these things so why don't we see if we can take one apart but first you

131
00:09:42,079 --> 00:09:47,480
should check out our stealth desk pads available now on LTD store.com see how I

132
00:09:45,800 --> 00:09:51,440
snuck that in there that that all stealthy light yeah I know it was a

133
00:09:49,399 --> 00:09:56,360
stretch for context we also brought along a fullsize three and a halfin hard

134
00:09:53,880 --> 00:10:05,240
drive theoretically everything in here should be in here just smaller

135
00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:07,360
wild what the devil is that bit triwing

136
00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:10,720
oh my goodness here is a regular hard drive then don't worry these were both

137
00:10:08,959 --> 00:10:16,560
dead and out of warranty before we took them apart there's your magnetic storage

138
00:10:12,920 --> 00:10:19,440
medium there's your read and right heads

139
00:10:16,560 --> 00:10:24,200
at the ends of these uh actuator arms so you've got many platters CU it's a very

140
00:10:21,200 --> 00:10:25,720
high capacity disc okay your controller

141
00:10:24,200 --> 00:10:29,839
is going to be probably under there somewhere yeah

142
00:10:28,240 --> 00:10:38,920
yeah there you go controllers right there on that PCB okay now Micro

143
00:10:34,639 --> 00:10:38,920
Drive okay okay it seems to be a

144
00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:45,160
sticker all right is that it then is

145
00:10:43,519 --> 00:10:53,480
that the platter oh oh oh no way no way no way

146
00:10:50,040 --> 00:10:56,839
this whole thing is just the compact

147
00:10:53,480 --> 00:10:59,399
flash interface and the controller board

148
00:10:56,839 --> 00:11:03,959
this is the hard drive it's even smaller and cuter than I thought look at this no

149
00:11:01,959 --> 00:11:08,200
that's what she said this isn't the platter this is all sealed okay so this

150
00:11:06,399 --> 00:11:15,760
is just the back of the spindle motor that's what you're seeing here that's the hub for the spindle motor okay so we

151
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:18,920
actually need to take the top cover off

152
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:21,320
okay see this is this it makes this

153
00:11:18,920 --> 00:11:26,079
thing makes me feel like a big giant person or something okay so you can see

154
00:11:24,240 --> 00:11:30,040
it's got like a really strong like a reinforced frame around

155
00:11:28,079 --> 00:11:33,519
it that's it's going to be really important for keeping everything stable

156
00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:37,480
inside while it's spinning I've never even held one of these before back when

157
00:11:35,519 --> 00:11:42,680
these were modern technology like there's no way I could $500

158
00:11:40,320 --> 00:11:43,959
what it's so

159
00:11:43,959 --> 00:11:54,440
cute I'm dead oh my God it really is

160
00:11:49,959 --> 00:11:57,120
exactly just a hard drive but tiny it

161
00:11:54,440 --> 00:12:00,839
looks like a freaking novelty thing like it doesn't even seem real it seems like

162
00:11:59,560 --> 00:12:04,639
the kind of thing you just put on your keychain you know the funny thing is I

163
00:12:02,959 --> 00:12:08,000
was expecting to show you guys like oh here's the you know the read heads and

164
00:12:06,200 --> 00:12:11,639
the actuator and you know here's kind of the analog for that well it's pretty

165
00:12:09,560 --> 00:12:15,320
obvious what's what in here it's just this but tiny there are a couple of

166
00:12:13,360 --> 00:12:19,959
differences like for one thing because there's only a single platter in here

167
00:12:17,199 --> 00:12:24,320
you've only got a read right head on one side and then a read right head on the

168
00:12:21,959 --> 00:12:29,880
other side you don't need this this like stack this assembly of them and honestly

169
00:12:27,880 --> 00:12:33,800
that's about it the Micro Drive really did hit the market at just about the

170
00:12:31,519 --> 00:12:37,839
perfect time didn't it its strong price to storage ratio allowed it to dominate

171
00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:42,600
the emerging digital photography Market while flash media was struggling through

172
00:12:40,240 --> 00:12:46,959
puberty and even when its days were numbered by the mid 2000s it helped to

173
00:12:45,040 --> 00:12:51,720
shrink the MP3 player to fit into everyone's pocket making giant portable

174
00:12:49,320 --> 00:12:57,199
music players a thing of the past sorry creative Nomad jukebox oh and sorry this

175
00:12:54,639 --> 00:13:00,680
message from our sponsor secret lab their chairs are engineered to keep you

176
00:12:58,680 --> 00:13:04,800
incredible comfortable for long hours at work and play their Titan Evo 2022

177
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:08,399
series chair offers four-way lumbar support comes with a magnetic memory

178
00:13:06,600 --> 00:13:12,120
foam head pillow and is offered in different upholsteries like hybrid

179
00:13:09,839 --> 00:13:16,360
leatherette softweave Fabric and Napa leather with up to a 5-year extended

180
00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:19,040
warranty and 49 day return policy you're covered if anything goes wrong so head

181
00:13:17,839 --> 00:13:22,720
to the link in the description and check out secret lab today if you guys enjoyed

182
00:13:20,959 --> 00:13:26,360
this video maybe you'll enjoy the video about a much larger storage project the

183
00:13:25,440 --> 00:13:31,079
mother Vault many pedabytes it's good it's fun