The Microdrive is a registered trademark for miniature, 1-inch hard disks produced by IBM and Hitachi. These rotational media storage devices were designed to fit in CompactFlash (CF) Type II slots. The release of similar drives by other makers led to them often being referred to as "microdrives" too. By 2010, Microdrives were viewed as obsolete, having been overtaken by solid-state flash media in read/write performance, storage capacity, durability, and price. History Prior to the 1-inch Microdrive, a 1.3-inch HDD nicknamed the "Kittyhawk" was developed and launched in June 1992 by Hewlett Packard with a capacity of 20, then later 40 MB. These units weighed about 28g (1oz), with dimensions of 2.0" × 1.44" × 0.414" (50.8mm × 36.5mm × 10.5mm) and were the physically smallest hard drives in the world before the Microdrive. The Kittyhawk was a failure however, and didn't last long in the market. Development The idea of the Microdrive was created by IBM researcher Timothy J. Reiley who was working at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose. He wanted to create a small form factor hard disk drive with high capacity storage that would be used for mobile devices, after working on a project to look at Micromechanics. Originally Timothy planned for the drive to use Microelectromechanical systems for parts of the drive such as the spindle motor and head actuator. Thomas R. Albrecht, another researcher, collaborated with Timothy to design and create the drive. Thomas changed the drive technology to miniaturized conventional technologies instead due to the increased technical risk and costs of using Microelectromechanical systems. The leader of mobile drive development at IBM's Fujisawa facility at the time, Hideya Ino, highly sought the potential of a 1-inch disk drive. He had a team collaborate with the IBM researchers to create working prototypes. Those prototypes were then used to persuade product planning and marketing teams to support the project. Two notable people from the Japan development team were Mitsuhiko Aoyagi and Kenji Kuroki, who contributed to launching the product line. Bill Healey and John Osterhout worked at the storage technology division in San Jose and were responsible for the business development and marketing of the Microdrive. Introduction In September 1998, IBM announced the Microdrive in North America. It was advertised as being about the size of a large coin, weighing less than an AA battery, and the capacity of over 200 floppy disks. The