14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has recently announced a new series of miniature, 1.3-inch hard-disk drives, called the Spinpoint A1. Given its miniature size, there have been no implementations for the drive until now, as both JVC and LaCie managed to find it a good use.
The first one to adopt the miniature spinning platters of the Spinpoint A1 was JVC in its new Everio GZ-MG730 camcorder. The camcorder uses as hard-drive a 30GB version of the Spinpoint A1, that only measures 42.8 x 36.4 x 5 mm. The drive fits perfectly into the compact camera and provides enough free space for shooting about 5 hours of video at a maximum resolution of 720x480 pixels .
"We designed the Spinpoint A1 hard drive to meet the surging capacity requirements from multimedia applications in increasingly smaller, mobile devices," said TJ Lee, VP of sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics' Storage System Division. "We're pleased to see JVC employ this new technology in their new, ultra compact Everio hard drive camcorder."
JVC has slated another version of the same camcorder to be shipped with a larger, 40GB Spinpoint A1 drive.
Another implementation of the miniature drive is LaCie's ultra-portable external USB drives mainly targeted at notebooks and ultra-mobile PCs. The external drive casing has been designed by Sam Hecht, formerly head of design at IDEO Europe. The result was the LaCie Little Disk, that comes with a USB 2.0 interface and an "overwhelming" weight of only 85 grams - the perfect storage solution to carry in a pocket or purse. LaCie's external hard drive can deliver a maximum data transfer rate of 30 MB/s and comes in two capacity versions: 30 and 40GB. The drives are on sale for $130 and $160 respectively.
Another LaCie product based on the Spinpoint A1 miniature drive is the USB Key Max, a 60-grams ultra-portable version of the Little Disk. Although it features the same USB 2.0 interface, the disk can deliver only 15 MB/s. The 30 GB Orange Key Max version sells for $120, while 40GB Black version retails for $150.
