HD-TechDat

Product List

Compiled by Hans-Jürgen Reggel

Important note: During the last year, the market was flooded with devices using 1.8" and 1" harddisks. Keeping this list up to date would be a hell of a job, so I reisgned.

3.5" Harddisks

3.5" harddisks are commonly used in all kinds of computers. Besides that, there are other products like harddisk video recorders using these disks. However, there are a few products worth mentioning.

Maxtor OneTouch and Maxtor OneTouch II
The Maxtor OneTouch series is a series of external 3.5" harddisks. These are currently available with up to 300GB. They are worth mentioning because Maxtor is the manufacturer of the harddisks, so they should know what they are doing. This means that the included power supply should match the demands of the harddisk, and that the bridge controller used will allow an appropriate transfer rate.

LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme 1.6TB
This is one of the infamous products. In order to achieve the storage capacity of 1.6TB at minimum cost, this disk just contains four single 400GB harddisks. There is no redundancy. If one harddisk fails, all data is lost.

2.5" Harddisks

The most common type of product using 2.5" harddisks are Notebooks. If you know what you can do to a Notebook without having its disk fail, then you know how much a 2.5" harddisk can take. But don't push your luck.

The next common product using 2.5" harddisks are PSDs. Some people prefer to use small CF cards instead of larger capcacity CF compatible 1" harddisks. To compensate for the lack of total storage capacity, they use PSDs and seem to completely forget about the fact that these PSDs contain harddisks. And in general, those small 1" drives are more rugged than the much bigger 2.5" harddisks.

1.8" Harddisks

This is the point where products start getting interesting. In contrast to the larger sized harddisks, many products containing these smaller harddisks are cheaper than the harddisks themselves. The reason for this is that the manufacturers of these devices, so-called OEM, buy huge amounts directly from the manufacturer. For those disks availble in retail sales, the reail chain adds a significant amount to the price. Some of the harddisks are not available for retail sales at all, so ripping them out of the respective products might be the only way to get them.

Unknown or Unspecified 1.8" Harddisk (Toshiba or Hitachi)
For the following products it is either unspecified or unknown which of the 1.8" harddisks are used.

Toshiba 1.8" Series
The most famous product using Toshiba 1.8" harddisks are the Apple iPod mp3 players. If you take a look at the storage capacity of the different generations of Toshiba harddisks and compare these to the available iPod versions, this will become obvious. Of course, these disks are used in some Toshiba Subnotebooks, and many other products where saving space is important.
Current iPod models are:
Toshiba MK2004GAL HDD1422

Hitachi Travelstar C4K40-20 HTC424020F7AT00 DK14FA-20
This 20GB 1.8" harddisk will be found in several products, the most famous ones are:
Hitachi Travelstar C4K40-40 HTC424040F9AT00 DK13FA-40
This 40GB 1.8" harddisk is mainly used in Archos products, for example:

1" Microdrives and other 1" harddisks

This is where things start getting really weird. If you can get a sophisticated electronics product (not just an external enclosure with included harddisk) containing a Microdrive at about 60% of the retail price of the bare Microdrive, then something is seriously wrong.

Seagate ST1 5.0GB and CF Photo Hard Drive 5.0GB
The youngest members in the 1" league are the Seagate ST1 and Seagate CF Photo Hard Drive. If you read about a device having 5GB storage, it most likely contains one of these drives, but you never know which one it will be. Even if a product is reported to contain the CF compatible type, this might change with the next batch. Having the CF compatible types in the first few batches might be just a publicity stunt, so be careful...
These products are the potential victims of drive-rippers:

Hitachi Microdrive 3K4-4 HMS360404D5CF00
Whenever a device is advertized having 4GB storage, it most likely contains the 4GB Hitachi Microdrive. But some of these Microdrives are not compatible with digital cameras, because they only support the ATA interface.
The most famous products are:

GS-Magicstor 1022C CF+ Type II 2.2GB
This very infamous self-proclaimed microdrive was used in several products. For some time, Transcend offered a re-labelled version, but it looks like they have removed all evidence from their website. In the meantime there is also a "PLUS" version available, but the products listed will most likely contain the original version.
It is unknown whether the advertized ATA (1022A) and USB 2.0 (1022U) versions exist. The same goes for all of the 4.4GB models (1044x) which most likely only exist as PDF versions.
Some of the products which most likely use the 1022c are:

Cornice 1.5GB Storage Element
Whenever a device is advertized having 1.5GB storage, it most likely contains this Cornice Storage Element. Amongst these are several mp3 players, for example the Creative Nomad MuVo² 1.5GB. And these external harddisks:
Cornice 3.0GB Storage Element
Samsung has introduced a mobile phone with 3.0GB harddisk using the Cornice Storage Element.

Hans-Jürgen Reggel   ·   http://www.hjreggel.net/hdtechdat/   ·   2004-09-09 ~ 2005-09-27