Cornice today announced the expansion of its storage offerings with the addition of an ultra thin, high-capacity personal storage device. The Cornice Dragon series micro hard drives, available in 8- and 10-gigabytes, will allow OEMs to offer thinner and higher-capacity consumer electronics devices while featuring industry-leading robustness, durability, and low power requirements for everyday consumer use. Audio/video players, mobile phones and personal storage devices will all be enhanced by the Dragon series micro hard drive.

Thinner and Smaller

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 -- a necessity for next-generation, high-capacity mobile phones, audio/video players and personal storage devices. The Dragon series drives are 40-percent smaller than its predecessor, Storage Elements, as well as current competitive drives.

Higher Capacities and Lower Power

Cornice's unique architecture is designed from the ground up and exclusively for CE devices. By focusing only on components required for the CE market, Cornice has created a disk drive solution that is streamlined specifically for these pocket-able products. At 8-gigabytes today, and 10-gigabytes in the near future, Cornice is firmly in the leadership position for storage density. In response to end-user endurance demands, Cornice has decreased the power of Dragon by half, and now represents only five percent of the total battery consumption within a typical MP3 player system.

"Through our strong strategic customer relationships, we've learned that portable consumer storage markets not only require a very small and thin form-factor, but they also require low power storage solutions rugged enough to meet the stringent consumer usability requirements," said Camillo Martino, Cornice's president and chief executive officer. "The Dragon series micro hard drive is Cornice's answer to our customers' needs and demands and a result of focusing our storage solutions for portable consumer electronics. The market opportunity for this type of storage is growing rapidly and Cornice is in a prime position to capture a large long-term market share."

The new Dragon series drives are protected by Cornice's rugged design, Crash Guard, and can withstand excessive shaking, extreme drops, and other abuse without skipping, stopping, or crashing.

Crash Guard Consists of:

• Active Latch -- 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. 
• Skip Control -- 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. 
• Drop Safe -- 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.

Other mini drive includes

Hitachi Presents New Miniature Hard Drives
http://www.slashphone.com/69/2495.html

Toshiba's Mini Drive
http://www.slashphone.com/70/989.html