Small Is Beautiful.

Writing a monthly column usually means expounding on a single topic. But this month I'm leafing through the clippings and emails I've saved (you can't imagine how many computer publications I subscribe to!), so I can catch you up on some shorter items of interest.

First, though, let me apologize for my innumerate lapse. I miscalculated the price of SCSI hard drives in a recent dialogue with my colleague Mark Ferelli. At any given capacity point a SCSI drive costs more than the equivalent IDE drive; but the permegabyte difference is not an order of magnitude; it's merely about double.

SCSI Still Wins

That said, however, SCSI is the interface of choice for high-performance computer systems, and here's more proof. In the cover story of the November 2000 issue of Linux Journal, under the headline "Building the Ultimate Linux Workstation," technical editor Don Marti declares, "The very fastest drives are available in SCSI versions only ... [and] as you add more drives to your system you'll appreciate the fact that SCSI doesn't hog interrupts like IDE does." Marti recommends installing "two or more" 10,000-rpm drives from IBM, Quantum or Seagate on an Ultra SCSI card: specifically Adaptec model 29160.

Where IDE does trump SCSI, though, is price. In another article in the same issue, assistant editor Jason Schumaker declares that building Marti's "ultimate" workstation may cost over $3,000. So he tells how to assemble what he calls "a zippy, dependable Linux box [that] can be done for as little as $800." Only one-tenth of its cost needs to be spent on storage: he suggests an $80 Seagate 5,400-rpm, 15GB drive with an IDE (specifically ATA/66) interface.

Taking It With You

Speaking of HDDs, two intriguing new portable drives have come to my attention. A company called DataZONE calls their product a DataBook. It's an external drive that can connect to a computer via any of several interfaces, including PCMCIA, USB, Parallel Port, or FireWire. Moreover, "You can buy a new cable when the next fast interface becomes available," according to director of marketing Leslie Kaczeus.

With capacities ranging from 5GB-30GB, and retailing for $199-$699 respectively, the DataBook by itself is an alternative to disk-cartridge storage devices such as Iomega's Jaz. But the company also offers what it calls a DataBay for $95: a "docking module" in the 5.25-inch form factor to turn it into an internal drive. Either way, the HDD inside is specified to be bootable and hot-swappable.

Something called Digital Wallet, from a company called Minds@Work, is a battery-powered Toshiba 2.5-inch HDD with 6GB capacity. It comes with a PCMCIA slot and a CompactFlash adapter for that slot. Other adapters are available for SmartMedia, Sony's Memory Stick, and IBM's MicroDrive.

This would be merely a portable backup drive like the DataBook, if there were not a Motorola CPU inside, enabling it to serve as a transfer station for digital pictures. Empty your camera's solid-state card into the Digital Wallet and you don't have to download your pictures right away into your desktop or laptop computer. The 6GB device costs $499--that's high, but it's much less than you'd pay for even 1GB of solid-state storage.

Don't Write Off Write-Once

Still need proof that there are fresh applications for write-once optical disk storage? Just ask Sony and Cirrus Logic. Sony's latest digital camera in the Mavica series, the $1,300 model MVC-CD1000, uses a 3-inch (8cm) CD-R disk with 156MB capacity, able to hold up to 160 high-resolution (2.1-megapixel) images. The critical image encoding/decoding process is managed by Cirrus Logic's model CR3465 chipset.

Granted, recording each photograph on CD-R media takes a full three seconds--treble the time that a CompactFlash or SmartMedia card needs to do the same job; but those solid-state devices can't hold as many high-res pictures. IBM's MicroDrive has a greater capacity, but it's not intended to provide "permanent" storage.

On each $4 disk, 160 photos could cost as little as three cents apiece, although most users probably won't fill up any disk completely. But those pictures won't ever have to be archived on something else: CD-R data is specified to be readable for at least ten years and, in practice will probably last much longer. Using a disk that can be read in any tray-loaded drive also obviates the need for external cables, interface ports, camera cradles, diskette or PC-Card adapters for flash-memory cards, and even image-retrieval software.

Odd Shapes

Tray-loaded drives are the most popular kind, now (the exception being slot-loaded CD-Audio drives in home stereo sytems and automobile dashboards). And that's good news for companies who are offering CD-R disks in odd shapes.

You've seen them, haven't you? Business cards are the most common shape, but triangles, rectangles (mimicking book-covers), maple- or fig leaves . . . almost any geometrical form can be produced. (The disks aren't cut down from 4.72-inch media, of course; they're individually injection-molded.)

Capacities range from just a few megabytes to about 50MB, but a typical "business card" tops out at 40 MB-- enough for about ten minutes' worth of audio, or a minute or two of video, or several hundred HTML pages--enough data, in other words, to make practically any presenter's pitch.

The reason these odd-shaped "disks" work, of course, is that the data files on a CD always begin on a track close to the hub, then spiral out from there. The only requirements are for a standard-size spindle hole, and at least three edge points, radially equidistant from the center, to define a virtual circumference and secure the piece while it's spinning.

The first generation of business-card media were factory-replicated CD-ROMs. But write-once CD-R media (I don't expect rewritability any time soon) are now available from specialty retailers for about $2 apiece in lots of 1,000 units or more. As the concept catches o the quantity prices will fall, and higher per-unit media in mall retail quantities (say, a ten-pack) will come on to the market.

Wouldn't you like to send your sweetheart a heart-shaped CD valentine?