iVDR Hard Drives

[Dïscfärm]

Something I meant to post a couple of months ago...


information Versatile Disk for Removable usage

It seems that a consortium in the storage industry wants to be able to give you the ability to use removable and rewriteable Serial ATA HARD DRIVES (2.5-inch and 1.8-inch) as a means for data storage and exchange between devices of varying type. In essence, it comes down to Hard Drive versus DVD-R/W (and +R/W).

Canon, Fujitsu, Hitachi/IBM, JVC, Maxtor, Pioneer, Sanyo, Seagate, and Sharp are just some of the iVDR members.

• What is iVDR?
  
  "iVDR " stands for Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage, a lightweight, compact, removable hard disk drive compatible with a wide range of applications from AV to PC devices. iVDR has the large capacity and fast random access typical of Hard Disk drives. Using multiple iVDR will allow easy construction of servers with TB (Tera Bytes) capacity. Through the use of the iVDR will for the first time be able to achieve a next generation large capacity data platform compatible with a wide range of devices such as AV and PC devices.

http://www.ivdr.org/

 

[CougTek]

While it looks like a very interesting and promising alternative, I'm pretty sure it won't catch - like most other hard drive-like small portable storage devices for consumer products. The reason? People, at large, seem to prefer the disc media to anything else for this kind of use. Even if their old CDs are completly incompatible with the new disc format, given the choice, they'll still opt for the disc-like media over anything else.

And technical data citing the advantages of HDD over disc media won't change much of anything as most Joe Six-Pack cannot grab the way a hard disk drive works anyway. Just say to one of those the term "access time" and you'll only see the void in his eyes. It is hopeless. I wish it would be otherwise. Maybe it's because small CDs-like disk were presented as the storage device of the future in the SCi-Fi movies of the nineties...

 

[blakerwry]

Hard disks are just so costly and prone to damage... a writable DVD cost less and is simpler to maintain.

The advantages of a HDD is taht they are fast and can basically be written to an infinite amount of times. The disadvantage is that they will wear out after a few(maybe 5) years of constant use, they usually develop whine, they are probably best left running until they're not going to be used for the rest of the day (which means they will use more power)....

A disc type solution might create the same amount of heat and noise... be less responsive... but each disk would probably last for a few thousand writes... could be read for decades... also it seems disc drives live longer with power management constantly turning them off... meaning you get a power savings and might also not have to hear the noise of the machine...

Now that I think about it, Discs have a number of different speeds they can be ran at while HDD's spin at a constant speed... this would probably be most important while watching a movie.. a good DVD player will only spin at 1-3x and will be silent... you can't neccessarily say the same thing about a HDD.

 

[blakerwry]

My point is that a disc solution...(while maybe slower).. is not a bad thing.

Depending on the implementation of each idea I see them as fairly equal.

 

[SteveC]

A disc type solution ... could be read for decades...

Maybe not.

 

[blakerwry]

Steve, as stated in the article, the problem affects a small percentage (between 1 and 10%) of australian DVD's... and is caused by poor manufacturing. These problems are easily preventable and I suspect that they will work themselves out as time goes on.

 

[Platform]

A disc type solution ... could be read for decades...

Maybe not.

Ironically, recordable media (CD-R, DVD+-R, etc) is proving to be somewhat better at handling archival problems from water vapour intrusion.

Of course, it is a lot less expensive to use reflective aluminum-based disc pressings in a mass production environment.

 

[James]

My Gladiator DVD recently bit the dust - looks like its suffering from exactly what was described. Very annoying.