Possible P2 Alternative?

Nature Shooter

Nature Shooter

Well-known member
I was just getting ready to order some p2 cards when I came across this:

Toshiba 5GB 1.8" PCMCIA Hard Drive

T24-MK5002-main.jpg


Chances are it wouldn't work, but I'm still curious to see if anyone has tried using one of these instead of a p2 card in their HVX.

It would certainly be cheaper than p2, but I'm not sure that it would fit properly or that the HVX would recognize it?
 
All the info I've found so far is available at the link to tigerdirect.com above the image. Here are the main specs they give for the drive:

Specifications

Capacity (GB) Learn More 5

Interface PCMCIA Type II

Spindle Speed (RPM) 3990

Buffer Memory 256KB

Average Seek (msec) Learn More 15.0

Track-to-Track Seek Time (typical read, ms) 3.0


Features

* Lightweight, only 55 grams
* Dual Voltage: 5V and 3.3V
* 15ms Average Seek Time
* Dual Interface: PC Card ATA and 68-pin ATA
* 66.7MB/s Ultra DMA Transfer Rate
* 300,000 MTTF Hours
 
My guess here is that it would not work since the HVX is streaming data to a solid state array. Since this is a physical disk mechanism, something needs to give the command to the disk to spin as well as to provide power to it. Furthermore, I doubt that a 3990 rpm drive would keep up with the stream. So, my best guess is no.

Ned Soltz
 
I would much rather have my footage on solid state memory instead of a hard drive. A hard drive also adds to the internal heat, that suposedly Panasonic eliminated some potential features due to the possibility of overheating something inside.


No thanks to onboard hard drives.
If I add a hard drive, I want it outside of my camera.

Besides, there are control features inside the "RAID" P2 cards, so it won't work anyway.
 
It definitely won't work. A P2 card isn't just a storage device, it has its own processor, it responds to commands the camera sends it, and it even can have its firmware updated. A hard drive would have to be able to do all that, and it can't; a hard drive is just a plain storage device.
 
Before solid state memory cards became cheap enough, news photographers used to use PCMCIA Microdrives to store photos from their cameras.

These drives were very sensitive to shock, relatively speaking. If you dropped it once, then you may as well drop it twice, the second time into the trash.

When compact flash cards became cheaper the Microdrives disappeared.
 
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