Implementation Guides

Removable Disks Get Smaller

PCQ Bureau

03 Apr 2003 03:50 IST

New Update

Storage has recently been a much-pursued area in IT research, and the mega GB drives of today are already promising to turn into giants of TB capacity, tomorrow. The increase in capacity has coincided with miniaturisation and new plug-n-play removable storage. iVDR or Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage is not one of the regular, hyped up technology breakthroughs that seem to debut every other day. Rather than promoting it as a radical technology, its supporters see it as a means to use existing hard-disk technology in more innovative ways.

Advertisment

Compressing data

Compression makes use of the fact the some part of a given chunk of data is redundant and can be removed and re-created later, when necessary. Thus you can store more data in a given space. Compression is a de-facto add-on with all back up utilities–Norton Ghost allows the user to choose one of the three compression options. In some tape drives, compression is built on the drive for better performance as compression takes a good amount of processing power. If the tape drive is not given a steady stream of data (if compression is done on an overloaded processor), shoe shining (where the tape has to repeatedly back up and restart sections of the backup) may occur and result in reducing the tape life.

Different products may use proprietary formats. However the underlying algorithms remain the same–either for large-scale enterprise or for personal backup. Examples of such algorithms are ZIP, RAR and Xdelta. What compression ratio can you get? This depends on the type of data being backed up. Databases like Oracle may achieve a greater compression ratio as the tables may have just marked spaces for the data on the hard disk for filling it up later. Data like audio/video/some image formats cannot be compressed at all as they are already stored in highly compressed formats.

iVDR is a removable, small hard disk that can be carried around in your pocket just as zip disks or floppies were earlier. It is as speedy as your PCs hard disk and tough enough to take quite a bit of wear and tear. It is also plug-n-play. What sets it apart from other regular removable storage is its storage capacity–current models feature 40 GB. Plans are afoot to increase this to about 400 GB in the next three years.

iVDR is being actively promoted by an all Japanese eight member consortium that includes some well known industry giants such as Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Phoenix, Pioneer, Sanyo, Sharp and Victor.

Advertisment

iVDR can easily fit
inside your pocket

The consortium touts iVDR as a candidate for home servers (yes, networked homes of the future are expected to have servers) and AV (Audio-Video) devices. The consortium also claims that iVDR will allow corporates and businesses to easily construct servers of TB. The consortium has laid down iVDR specifications — these range from hardware, file system and interface specifications to accepted industry standards for security. The drives will be made in 2.5” and 1.8” sizes with serial and parallel ATA interfaces. Hardware specifications for the 2.5” drive include external dimensions of 130mmx80x12.7 mm, shock resistance of 900 G and a 50-pin connector pin with durability for 10,0000 connections and disconnections. According to the consortium the storage for AV devices are expected to form a major chunk of the demand for the new drives.

Suggested prices of around $200 and above might make some potential consumers wait and decide before they opt for an iVDR. But, the day might not be far when you will plug an iVDR into your TV-recorder to record a serial and, later, into your music system or PC to play your favourite songs.

Advertisment

Benoy George Thomas

Advertisment

Stay connected with us through our social media channels for the latest updates and news!