Microdrive

These are very small hard drives / hard disks you can use in your digital camera or PocketPC for example.

A microdrive is very small (usually 1”) hard drive in a compact flash format (see: storage_and_media:flash_memory). It’s a CF-II format (so they are a bit thicker than a Type I card) so you have to check to see if your device is able to accept these thicker cards.

The good thing is that microdrives are rather cheap. You can get up to 5 GB for very little money.

The bad thing is that they are not as robust as a flash card. For example, don’t put the microdrive near a magnet or you will lose your data. Don’t shake them too much! Don’t let them fall to the floor. And they might not work above 3000m because of the lower pressure there. The drive can be damaged, so if you climb mountains, a microdrive is not for you.

Microdrives are also very slow and consume a lot of power (compared with a flash card) because it is all mechanical.

Though a couple of years ago they were very good because you were able to get gigabytes for just a few hundred dollars/euros, today they are no longer recommended for digital photography. Today flash memory is very cheap too and because they are more robust I would rather buy two flash-cards than one microdrive.

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