Daft question?

[MikeD08]

Hi folks,

I have a MicroSD Memory Cards on my desk - 1Gb. As you may know they are a little over half inch long and 1CM wide (I'm not even going to try and measure how thick they are). The HardDrive in an Ipod can go up to 160GB

My question is: why are PC and laptop HardDrives so big (physically) in comparison?

[Spiderden]

Speed.
Hard drives are a lot faster than SD cards.

[MikeD08]

Speed.
Hard drives are a lot faster than SD cards.

I should have thought of that!!! What about Ipod drives? They're pretty quick (but I guess not quick enough!)

[Red Eye Media]

Ipod drives will probably be alot slower than standard hard drives because (I'm guessing here) the drive will be smaller than stated and the files will be compressed and de-compressed when accessed.

[Subbynet]

My question is: why are PC and laptop HardDrives so big (physically) in comparison?

Simples - if they just decided to make it smaller, then it wouldn't screw in and fit in 99% of the items its designed for... The outer casing has to remain the same size for this reason, even if the internals have reduced in size.

[boroova]

Different technology between hard drives and memory cards. Besides, the latter have got much smaller maximum capacity.

[mcol]

SD cards are solid state devices with no moving parts. Traditional HDD's are mechanical devices with heads moving around the disk to read the data.

Hence bigger.