iD Photo

The second-smallest Disc-Based Enclosed Media (DBEM) format is the iD Photo disk; a joint creation that was intended to compete with flash-based storage media for the digital camera market, but only ended up being compatible with two devices.

The short-lived iD Photo system — developed jointly by Sanyo, Olympus, and Hitachi Maxell — was announced to the public in July 1999, poised to enter the crowded market of consumer camera storage devices soon after. Sanyo and Olympus developed the drive mechanism, while Maxell was responsible for disk development. The only camera to use this format — the Sanyo iDshot IDC-1000Z — was released in 2000 with the iDstorage reader coming the following year. By mid-2002, the camera was discontinued, and the format began the slide down the Format Death Scale.

iD Photo disks were quite small, with a footprint of only 56.5 mm × 59.5 mm × 4.8 mm, but boasted a storage capacity of 730 MB¹⁾²⁾. The disks were single-sided, housed in a white plastic housing, with a locking shutter. The inner medium was a 0.6 mm thick disc that was 50.8 mm in diameter.

Disks could be read and photos retrieved on a computer by connecting the iDshot IDC-1000Z camera via USB (or FireWire) or by utilizing the iDstorage IDS-M1; a device that allowed iD Photo disks to be read by a computer and also allowed users to transfer photos to and from SmartMedia, and CompactFlash cards³⁾⁴⁾.

The camera was available on its own or bundled with the PCK-1000; an add-on package that included a USB cable, an IEEE 1394 (FireWire) cable, and three software CDs. Those CDs were Sanyo's Digital Disk Camera Software Pack 1.0; MGI PhotoSuite III SE v1.06; and Adobe Premiere 5.1 LE. The price of the camera and its accessories decreased steadily in the years following its release. Pricing data from August 2001 put the camera at ¥128,000 (US$ ~1,050) with a single DSM-D730AC disk at ¥3,000 (US$ ~25)⁵⁾, while the camera's original price is stated to have been ¥160,000 (US$ ~1,320).

iD Photo disks are a rewritable, magneto-optical format, based on the AS-MO (Advanced Storage, Magneto-Optical) standard⁶⁾⁷⁾ and the first generation of MAMMOS (Magnetic Amplifying Magneto-Optical System) disks⁸⁾. Further information about AS-MO and MAMMOS is scant.

Rating: Level 4 🟠 — Endangered

To utilize these disks you will either need an IDC-1000Z camera or an IDS-M1 iDstorage reader. A camera by itself can be found in working condition occasionally on eBay or on some Japanese auction sites, while the iD Storage reader can be much harder to find. While the format was created for digital photography, the disks themselves use the UDF file system⁹⁾ and seem to be usable for mass storage as long as you have a method of connecting it to a computer.