hard drives on mobile phones and the like

[jason87x]

So they make hard drives now in 1" sizes. But seriously don't you think they'd be cheaper by now? And they aren't all that big either.

But why aren't they used more often in high end phones at least? Is it a durability issue? I imagine it is as I always see friends dropping their phones and cracking screens on their $500 phones.

Also is the latency with even those small hard drives really high?

 

[The_Other_One]

A few years ago it was cheaper per gig to use microdrives. But anymore, it cost more to make such a small mechanical unit than to cram everything onto solidstate chips and the like. Plus, something like a hard drive requires more power and isn't nearly as durable as solid state units. And yes, the speed in general tends to be slower than similar flash based media.

 

[bomberboysk]

As far as pure throughput...its still hard to beat what the microdrives did. However, you factor in the latency of flash memory(almost none), as well as the high G load it is capable of withstanding...that there really shows the picture of why we don't see miniature hard drives used in phones. The last device that i remember really making use of microdrives internally was the ipod mini.