Microdrive

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Microdrive

1 GB IBM Microdrive
Media type	Hard disk drive
Encoding	RLL
Capacity	170 MB - 8 GB
Developed by	Timothy J. Riley, Thomas R. Albrecht, IBM Fujisawa
Manufactured by	IBM, Hitachi
Dimensions	42.0 mm × 36.0 mm × 5.0 mm
Usage	Portable audio players, Notebook computers, PDAs, Digital cameras
Released	September 9, 1998
Discontinued	2012

The Microdrive was a miniature, 1-inch hard disk drive released in 1998 by IBM. The idea was originally created in 1992 by duo Timothy J. Riley and Thomas R. Albrecht at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose. A team of engineers and designers at IBM's Fujisawa, Japan facility helped make the creation of the drive possible.

Due to the failure of the Kittyhawk, a 1.3-inch hard disk drive also created in 1992 by Hewlett Packard, initial support for it was reluctant. Despite that, development persisted. The Microdrive caused the creation of and used the CompactFlash Type II format which became the de facto standard for devices utilizing the technology at the time. Because of this, and it's advantages over flash technology, the Microdrive ended up being a success.

Although a niche for a short time, the Microdrive market later became very competitive. Many companies began producing miniature hard disk drives also referred to as Microdrives.^[1] Some offered more storage capacity or were even smaller in physical size to the original Microdrive. This did not last long however. By the mid to late 2000s, miniature hard disk drives were being viewed as obsolete with flash media such as CompactFlash, SD, and USB flash surpassing them in speed, capacity, durability, and pricing.