Microdrive

[Bunsen]

The Microdrive I mentioned elsewhere arrived today, complete with generic USB adapter. And lookit - it's got an Apple on the back! Must have been an iPod pull.

I stuck the adapter in the back of my Lombard and formatted it as two 1.9GB HFS+ partitions with OS 9 drivers. It's remarkably quiet. The only catch is that the CF connector is mounted on the side of the USB stick, so the card almost collides with the Ethernet port.

I'll report back with speed tests anon.

It's a 4GB Seagate ST1 Compact Flash form factor hard drive with 2MB of onboard disk cache. They range from 2.5GB to 8GB, and I can see some right now on ebay with Buy It Now prices under US$10 including delivery. Mine was US$17.

 

[Brett B.]

Wow, what a steal! I may snag one of those to replace the 20GB drive in my router. I had it running on a 256MB CF card with an IDE adapter before but it died after about 6 months. One of these should last much longer.

 

[Bunsen]

Yeah I was stunned by how cheap they were too

 

[benjgvps]

Hmm, these might be great replacements for CF cards for internal projects, I'm thinking my PowerBook 150, or if it could fit with an IDE to SCSI adapter, my PowerBook 180c.

 

[Bunsen]

No reason why it shouldn't fit - it's exactly the same size as a Compact Flash card, just a little thicker.

/edit/ In fact, they are Type II CF - so the adapter has to be one that will take that size, and not just Type I

 

[porter]

I had it running on a 256MB CF card with an IDE adapter before but it died after about 6 months.

Mounted read only I hope?