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A Tiny Hard Drive in Your Pocket

Techstination feature for Wednesday, August 3, 2005

A tiny hard drive in your pocket. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Small USB drives that use flash memory have been growing in popularity as a way to easily move files from computer to computer. Now, Imation is out with Micro Hard Drives…that plug into USB ports in pretty much the same way. Personal storage media market development manager Steve Swenson says a two gigabyte version is on sale now…with a four gigabyte model on the way…

"The product is designed to resemble a padlock in form. It features a unique locking clip that is ideal for attaching it to a belt loop or a brief case or a backpack. It features a rubberized USB extension cable. It is fully integrated and can be plugged right into the USB port to power the drive."

It's the first commercial application of Toshiba's tiny, less than one inch in size hard drive. No drivers or external power supply are needed. Is it cool? Sure. But why the need since flash memory drives are so readily available?

"What you're going to see is a lower cost per megabyte versus flash. The 2 gigabyte will probably be about 30 percent less than a comparable 2 gigabyte flash drive. The 4, when that's available, may be up to 40 to 50 percent less than a comparable capacity flash drive."

Imation says the drive is shock resistant and should be as durable as flash memory drives as well. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.