Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
wanted it to replace
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...
s, but instead came the
Zip drive
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...
, CD writers, and memory sticks and cards.
Overview
The technology has 140 MB of data storage, but it is slow and expensive. It is in products such as a still camera, a document scanner, and in late 1990s 4- and 8-track multitrack recording decks. Meant as a step up from the popular 4-track cassette-based studios, these recorders enjoyed a brief prominence before they were replaced by relatively affordable and far more flexible direct-to-hard drive recording on
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
and
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
based computers. The format lacks an affordable computer drive. Some examples of products that used the format are a few multitrack "
portastudio
The TASCAM Portastudio was the first four-track recorder based on a standard compact audio cassette tape. The term ''portastudio'' is exclusive to TASCAM, though it is generally used to describe all self-contained cassette-based multitrack rec ...
"-style audio recorders such as Sony's MDM-X4 and Tascam's 564.
MD Data2
In 1997, Sony introduced the MD Data2 format at 650 MB. The only product that used the format was Sony's DCM-M1 camcorder (capable of still images and
MPEG-2
MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, w ...
video).
Hi-MD
Since 2004,
Hi-MD
Hi-MD is a Magneto-optical drive, magneto-optical disc-based data storage device, data storage format. It was a further development of the MiniDisc. With its release in later 2004,
allows 340MB or 1GB of any type of data to be stored on a Hi-MD formatted MiniDisc, succeeding MD Data and MD Data2.
Hi-MD
Hi-MD is a Magneto-optical drive, magneto-optical disc-based data storage device, data storage format. It was a further development of the MiniDisc. With its release in later 2004,