Imation Mega TravelDrive 6GB 32601060 User Manual

Terence O’Kelly 

 
From cave walls to stone tablets to papyrus to photographic film to laser devices, storage 
technology has always come up with new ways to hold and preserve information.  We 
often overlook the fact that sometimes older methods coexist with the latest innovations 
simply because the older methods have advantages that cannot be ignored.  In the 
electronic age, paper is in greater use than ever before in human history.  For digital 
storage, magnetic recording—considered by many to be dying with tape—still leads the 
way in the greatest advances in storage capacity.  The new Memorex Mega TravelDrive 
takes advantage of these latest advances to offer capacities beyond flash drives in a more 
affordable package.   
 
PIONEERS OF MAGNETIC RECORDING 
 
Thomas Edison was the first to record sound, using wax cylinders and a recorder 
patented in 1877.  Oberlin Smith, a mechanical engineer from New Jersey, visited Edison 
the following year and that same year proposed the first methods of magnetic recording 
on undefined media.  Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark actually produced a magnetic audio 
recorder in 1893 using steel wire as the medium, and in 1934 German engineers began 
making magnetic tape, the most commonly recognized form of magnetic media.  Edison’s 
wax cylinders waned in the face of Emil Berliner’s flat platters, the shape copied by vinyl 
records, CDs, and DVDs.  This platter shape was also used for magnetic media; but these 
media were hidden from view in vinyl jackets (diskettes), plastic cases (micro diskettes), 
and sealed cases (hard drives and disk packs).  Optical discs have now replaced 
diskettes and tape in common use.  In time they, too, will yield to new challengers from 
the future—holographic storage for optical storage, solid-state for electronic storage, and 
advanced hard discs for magnetic storage using the same principles proposed by Oberlin 
Smith.   
 
PRINCIPLES OF MAGNETIC RECORDING 
 
The basic principles behind magnetic recording are simple: all magnets have two poles-- 
one with a positive charge and one with a negative charge.

  The charges are best 

defined when the poles are separated from each other as far as possible, as in a long, thin 
bar.  When the “bar” is a microscopic crystal with a single magnetic domain, it is 
impossible to eliminate or reduce the magnetic charge on the crystal.  It is magnetic 
forever.  It is possible, however, to reverse the charge so that the negative pole of the 
crystal becomes the positive pole and the positive pole becomes negative.  A powerful 
magnetic field can force or coerce the poles to switch.  The stronger the charge on the 
crystal, the harder it is to coerce the change in polarity; and the measurement of the 

                                                 

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 The ancient Greeks rubbed amber, fossilized sap, to put a static charge on it.  Small rods of 

statically charged amber floating on water worked as magnets in early compasses.  The Greek 
word for amber is electrum, and the association between magnetism and static charges led to our 
word “electricity.”