BIOS: Technology Means Business

US-based Cornice is expanding its storage offerings with an ultra-thin, high-capacity personal storage device.

The Dragon series micro hard drives, available in 8- and 10GB are designed to allow OEMs to offer thinner and higher-capacity consumer electronics devices that sport robustness, durability, and low power requirements. Per Devices at the start of the queue include digital audio and video players, mobile phones and personal storage devices.

By narrowing the casing around the disk and by shrinking the ‘z’ height, Cornice was able to produce the smallest and thinnest drive on the market. The Dragon series drives are 40 per cent smaller than its predecessor, Storage Elements, as well as current competitive drives.

Cornice’s unique architecture is designed from the ground up and exclusively for consumer electronics. By focusing only on components required for this market, Cornice has created a disk drive solution that is streamlined specifically for these pocketable products. At 8GB today, and 10GB in the near future (no exact date has been given), the Dragon now represents only 5 per cent of the total battery consumption within a typical MP3 player system.

Cornice technology should also help to ensure that consumer electronics devices will provide continuous and uninterrupted playback even during today’s most active lifestyles. The new Dragon series drives are protected by Cornice’s ruggedness design, Crash Guard, and can withstand excessive shaking, extreme drops, and other abuse without skipping, stopping, or crashing.

When dropped, the most common damage to a hard drive occurs when the head scrapes across the surface of the disk (not unlike the needle scratching across an old vinyl LP record when the turntable was bumped). Cornice securely locks the head in place with an active latch mechanism.

Hard drives are going places they have never been before – jogging, 4-wheel driving, skydiving - and are expected to operate even with excessive and repetitive motion. Cornice designed the Dragon series drives from the ground up to withstand the most extreme conditions while providing continuous playback without skipping or restarting.

This feature in the Crash Guard family allows the drive to actually sense being dropped. This means that even if the drive is in the middle of reading or writing data to the disk, it can immediately react and place the head safety under the active latch well before the unit actually strikes the ground.

The Dragon Series drive is available in volume quantities in Q1. List price is $85 (£47.83) per unit in quantities of 10,000 per year.

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