[HN Gopher] Building a Reader for the Smallest Hard Drive
___________________________________________________________________
Building a Reader for the Smallest Hard Drive
Author : voctor
Score : 89 points
Date : 2026-03-16 09:04 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.willwhang.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.willwhang.dev)
| tda wrote:
| Is there a video somewhere of the one inch microdrive with
| acrylic display shown in the article?
| voctor wrote:
| https://x.com/will_whang/status/2014960768249372845
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Cool!
|
| I found the old drive that worked with my Canon camera. It's a
| Hitachi 2GB Microdrive from 2003. It says CF+ Type-II. So larger,
| with a CompactFlash interface, boring in comparison.
|
| More history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
|
| I'm trying to remember the camera... Canon Powershot S1 IS maybe?
| It used a lot more battery running the microdrive.
| jusssi wrote:
| Damn, now I want one just to de-lid one and put it on a shelf.
| Looks like eBay has plenty of these.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Tempting.
|
| I wonder what material they used for the platter. I once took
| apart a 1.8" drive, and got a big surprise when the platter
| suddenly shattered. I was expecting aluminum, not
| glass/ceramic substrate.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Yes, glass was the typical substrate used in small HDDs,
| even in many of the 2.5" HDDs, e.g. in all the 2.5" HDDs
| that I had.
|
| It is easier to ensure that glass substrates are perfectly
| plane and without any surface defects than for substrates
| made of aluminum alloy.
|
| In 3.5" disks the risk of shattering becomes too great, so
| aluminum alloy is preferred.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I discovered that one day when I accidentally stepped on
| a removed 2.5" platter in bare feet :)
| raddan wrote:
| One of my most delightful discoveries of the early 2000s was
| that iPod Minis used Microdrives that were pin-compatible
| with CompactFlash cards. I had a little cottage industry in
| the back of my office upgrading my coworkers' old iPods to
| use bigger, solid state disks. I still have my 256GB iPod
| Mini. Aside from battery life, it still runs fine, and it is
| by far my favorite music player form factor.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Lost me at the first OpenClaw mention.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Surprised me too. In the end, I guess it's a time-saving tool
| for a tedious task. But reduces the old-school grittiness of
| the adventure. Still an enjoyable read.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Why? It seems foolish to have a knee jerk reaction to someone
| using a tool that got them where they needed to be.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| I suppose its a bit like winning a first person shooter game
| with aim assist on
|
| It is not an authentic display of pure skill
| raddan wrote:
| That's a good question, and I can't speak for the parent, but
| for me, I like reading about a person's journey of discovery.
| There were many insights this person did not have because he
| turned the task over to a power tool. People can use whatever
| tools they want. I also can spend my attention however I
| like. Reading about someone using AI is just boring to me.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Almost every commenter in this thread explained this better
| than I could.
|
| It's a bit like watching a 2 hour movie about a knight who'd
| been preparing to save his beloved princess from a dragon for
| 1h 59s, and then the screen fades to black, the narrator
| proclaims that the dragon is done, the knight marries the
| princess and they live happily ever after. Closing credits!
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| I was not evicting expecting to see OpenClaw here either. It's
| out of keeping with the rest of the article...
|
| At least there's acknowledgement of limitations and it's not
| just hype. Overall a useful data point in terms of what's
| possible.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I am not necessarily against AI, but in this case, I also lost
| interest at that point. I love reading about reverse
| engineering, and to me the first part of the article felt like
| it was leading up to that. But then it ended with what to me
| feels like "and then I asked AI to finish the project for me,
| which it did". That's not a criticism by the way, there's
| nothing wrong with the author using AI to reach a certain goal.
| I just don't find that interesting personally.
| jrmg wrote:
| Felt this way too.
|
| I may not have felt this way if the article had discussed
| this step in as much detail as the first steps - describing
| what was _done_ by the agent rather than just that an agent
| was used and the results. It all felt a bit "then it drew the
| rest of the goddamn owl".
|
| I'm not sure though - part of the appeal of this kind of
| article for me is the description of the human emotions - the
| highs and lows of doing the task - and that would possibly
| still have felt missing.
|
| Edit: Actually, now that I say that, there was a lot missing.
| How was the circuit designed, for example? How were
| components selected?
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I did finish the article, but for me, it was missing a
| discussion and review, probably manual improvement, of the code
| that came out of the LLM. Reverse-engineering means
| understanding a system that you didn't previously understand,
| which is still (with some degradation) possible while using an
| LLM.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I remember my Nokia N91 which had a 4GB version of one of these
| tiny HDDs, blew my mind at the time.
|
| Man do I miss the N-series, I had so many good phones in that
| era.
| andai wrote:
| First time hearing about this. I just looked up that drive.
| That's genuinely amazing, and kind of adorable.
| tarasglek wrote:
| Worked on that phone. I diagnosed if music player cache was
| working by putting back of phone to my ear and listening for
| seeking clicks from hdd
| alias_neo wrote:
| Nice! I loved that phone, was one of my favourites. One of
| the only, if not the only phone I ever owned that had a metal
| shell that I an recall.
|
| I had most of the N range, and was particularly interested in
| music ones, N95 was love/hate because the music
| button/reverse slide was so slow sometimes, and generally it
| just wasn't as good as N91 for music listening with its
| proper headphone jack placement, and always accessible
| controls.
|
| What kind of magic did that HDD have that it could be thrown
| around like a phone typically is without the issues we would
| see if we'd handled a laptop with HDD the same way?
| tarasglek wrote:
| Had an accelerometer that turned off hard drive when motion
| detected. High end ibm thinkpads had that too. Turns out if
| seek head is parked properly, its fairly robust
|
| N91 also had a ridiculously high quality DAC that beat
| pants off iPods of that gen.
| thehamkercat wrote:
| "Coded by OpenClaw" written on PCB
|
| was this necessary? could've said "Code written by LLM" or
| something
| ballstein wrote:
| Sent from my BlackBerry Storm
| mkirsten wrote:
| Still a great story, great page and impressive reverse
| engineering. Isn't OpenClaw vs. he did it "himself" a bit
| analogue to the critique "oh, he wrote the firmware in C++ and
| let the compiler figure out the assembly code".
|
| Maybe you wanted to see the assembly code, and that's fine. But
| he took a potentially difficult problem, found tools to solve it
| and documented (to some degree) the process?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Pretty sure I've got one of these in a 4GB USB package[0].
|
| [0] I'm 99.9% sure it's not SSD/SRAM/Flash because I'm 99.9% sure
| it predates cheap [those] by years. But I'll have to dig it out
| and get the full USB/HDD info later to check.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-20 23:01 UTC)