[USMA:24335] iVDR "inch" drives?

[CarletonM]

Discussion on the Ziff-Davis "ExtremeTech" forum.  Feel free to dive in.
http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/main.asp?webtag=extremetech&nav=messages&msg=24566.12

Initial post:

A consortium called iVDR is said to be readying tiny 1.8" and 2.5" hard drives, with removable cartridges, for introduction at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While the disks look like a cool idea, it appears that they may be ...

My response:

What in God's name is this 1.8 "inch" and 2.5 "inch" garbage? These are all metric companies in metric countries. Without doubt these new devices are in hard metric sizes. So why are they using antique units to describe their size? Is this another case of dumbing things down for Americans? The time has long past to ditch the entire archaic and obsolete inch-pound measurement system -- and any retrograde reference to it.

A response to that:

I don't think they're dumbing anything down for Americans, it's just that some things are still traditionally measured in inches. In Europe we still have inch sizes for car, motorcycle and bicycle wheels. In Germany at least, plumbing pipes and fittings are still done in inches, and we use 3,5" and not 8,89cm floppies. A ruler here is still called a Zollstock (an "inch stick"),one half kilo a Pfund (pound) and the international standard for sea-going vessels is sea miles, so the metric system hasn't completely taken over everything.

My further response:

The "3.5 inch" diskette is a myth. The Japanese designed it in the 1980's as exactly 90 mm. Calling it "8.89 cm" is a clumsy back-conversion from the inch description. IBM, one of the first users of this device, dumbed down the size description for the US audience, much as my local grocery chain dumbs down a 2 liter soda bottle to "67.6 ounces".

Now, the old 5.5 inch diskette that really WAS a floppy (bendable, not stiff) -- that WAS 5.5 inches. We know where that format has gone. With one of the removable disks given an inch size, IBM felt compelled to give the other the same thing, even when it didn't apply.

The antique system still used by some in the USA should have been tossed in the dustbin of history long ago.

Carleton MacDonald