Is that 5GB in your wallet, or are you just happy to see me?

January 18, 2003 10:56 PM

5GB on a Credit Card. The ever shrinking world of data storage just got smaller, as a company called StorCard has apparently invented a way to write up to 5GB worth of data on to media the size & shape of a credit card. Along with the media you have to buy a USB adaptor to read, but it's a quantum leap in data storage either way. Where will this madness end? Five GB on the head of a pin???
posted by jonson (30 comments total)

The price they quote for the cards are absolutely incredible (incredibly cheap that is). Of course the first thing I thought about when reading this article was how much smaller Apple can make an iPod if they based it on this.
posted by gyc at 11:38 PM on January 18, 2003

The first time I saw a commercially available 1GB drive for my mac (1992?) it cost $2000, and was a large, full height external SCSI drive. Now five times the data, at .0075 of the price, and it fits in your wallet. Ridiculous decade. On that schedule, by 2012, 25 gb storage should cost a less than a penny and fit in a thread of cloth, or an eyelash.

If only bandwidth & video cards were keeping pace, that crazy Neal Stephenson wouldn't be such a fiction author.
posted by jonson at 11:46 PM on January 18, 2003

Truly astonishing, if it's for real. Now all we need is the cheap flexible, foldable paperlike displays the engineers have been promising for a while, and I can carry my entire library, music collection, and video collection in a wallet.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:47 PM on January 18, 2003

Seriously, if i could have any vaporware product right now, it might just be those displays. Vaporware!! So damn tantalizing.
posted by jonson at 11:51 PM on January 18, 2003

What? No Humbuckers?
posted by Opus Dark at 12:17 AM on January 19, 2003

The people who invented USB should be shot!
Can you say ' It SUCKS!"? What a worthless technology.
posted by HTuttle at 1:12 AM on January 19, 2003

It takes a helluva long time to transfer 5GB of data over USB...
posted by PenDevil at 1:15 AM on January 19, 2003

Only 5GB? IBM's working on 300GB through Atomic Force Microscopy.
posted by Down10 at 1:32 AM on January 19, 2003

you know what's hot? 1gB sd card. Now thats hot (and the size of a postage stamp, no moving parts). It's magic! Really, it is.
posted by ac at 1:34 AM on January 19, 2003

Indeed PenDevil. I mean maybe for keyboards, cordless mice, and that sort of crap USB is usable. But for moving data, it sucks royale. Firewire is so superior. Do PC companies consciously lag behind? Is it a self perpetuating inferiority complex? Is Bil Gates somehow to blame?
posted by HTuttle at 1:42 AM on January 19, 2003

It takes a helluva long time to transfer 5GB of data over USB...

USB 2.0 peaks out at 480 mbps. That's plenty fast, I'd say.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:44 AM on January 19, 2003

Is Bil Gates somehow to blame?

Sorta.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:45 AM on January 19, 2003

Five GB on the head of a pin???

5 GB in our little pin heads... perhaps?

It takes a helluva long time to transfer 5GB of data over USB...

Crimeny... that damn thing fits in your wallet!
posted by Witty at 2:10 AM on January 19, 2003

Next up--StorCard as an audio storage medium.

I can just imagine, on my bus ride to work.

(on cell phone)
"Ohmygawd, did you get the new Eminem StorCard? Some people say he's a jerk but I think he's hot!"
posted by 4midori at 2:58 AM on January 19, 2003

Woah, isn't this a hoax? Having 5GB of data on a small area - ok - but moving, flexible, bendible parts inside a credit card sized device? It sounds mad fragile to me. Even credit cards don't last long in my wallet, I fret to think of a flexible harddisk...

But, major kudos if it's for real though :)
posted by Icestorm at 3:05 AM on January 19, 2003

Storcard can contain from 100MB up to 5GB which translates from marketese to english:

a) the first version, if any, will contain 100MB and it will be comparatively cheap
b) we don't know how and when we'll be able to market 5GB card but it's possible
c) by then we'll have downsized the good brains that could make the card work and we'll go the way of the Dodo or the way of Iomega ZIP : surpassed by a DVD-R drive at a fraction of a cartridge cost.

If you want 4.7GB now, go buy urself a DVD-R now.
posted by elpapacito at 7:21 AM on January 19, 2003

And you thought you could see the Mark of the Beast.

And you thought you could choose the Mark of the Beast.

Like fluoride in the drinking supply, you haven't a chance.
posted by the fire you left me at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2003

monving parts, bah. You're right, elpapacito, 100 bucks for 100 megs, look for crazy prices after that, especially w/ moving parts. solid state is the way to go anyway. 1gb media cards (sony) are coming.
posted by tomplus2 at 9:19 AM on January 19, 2003

Sony's memory stick -- about two-thirds the size of a Juicy Fruit gum, IIRC -- is hitting 1GB this quarter.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:26 AM on January 19, 2003

good. now it's easier than ever for me to lose even more important data.
posted by fuq at 10:15 AM on January 19, 2003

Whips the 256 meg pen drive I got for Christmas (of which they also sell 1 GB models). But I still love it. Even though I'm still looking for someone to develop a good security/encryption program for portable data storage.
posted by rushmc at 10:27 AM on January 19, 2003

Backup, fuq.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 11:07 AM on January 19, 2003

i can routinely make 100Gb discs at work (i'm, ahem, an optical disc mastering technologist), but at the moment there's nothing to read them on apart from a ridiculous test reader the size of a fridge-freezer. i doubt you'll actually see 5Gb credit cards anytime soon, not necessarily because of the space issue, more likely because of the moving parts issue.

i'd like to be proven wrong, of course.
posted by nylon at 12:00 PM on January 19, 2003

Sony's memory stick -- about two-thirds the size of a Juicy Fruit gum, IIRC -- is hitting 1GB this quarter.

Yes, but the quoted price for this is $800 (USD). CF cards are around $500 (USD) for the same capacity. The real innovation will be when a company can offer a product like this which is not as expensive (or more) as the device using it!
posted by Gif at 1:44 PM on January 19, 2003

Well, from the details on the company's website it sounds like a high density floppy disk!
posted by daveg at 3:14 PM on January 19, 2003

USB 2.0 peaks out at 480 mbps. That's plenty fast, I'd say.
In theory only - has anyone been able to get it to work at these speeds?
posted by dg at 5:14 PM on January 19, 2003

Someone should mention FireWire 800, which runs at 800 Mpbs. You can take your USB-2-barely-faster-than-FireWire crap hackery and go home now.

8)
posted by Cerebus at 8:11 PM on January 19, 2003

Hopefully with this 5gb credit card I will soon be able to pay peoplewith--and be paid in--pornography, which is something I've been looking forward to the entire duration of the information revolution.
posted by Hildago at 10:49 PM on January 19, 2003

Hildago - I'll take fisting_twins.jpg in exchange for this venti soy latte.
posted by jonson at 10:58 PM on January 19, 2003

The first thing I thought of when I saw "5GB on a credit card" was... man, it's going to take a while to pay that off!
posted by kindall at 9:51 AM on January 20, 2003