Microdrive
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A miniature hard disk.
"One-inch disks typically held about 8 to 10 GB and microdrives were either 2 or 4 GB."
- 2 An early computer storage system using cartridges of looped tape. historical
"1984, Alison Maguire, interviewed in SINCLAIR talks... (in Crash magazine, issue 3, April 1984) http://www.crashonline.org.uk/03/sinclair.htm There are lots of things that will benefit from being on a microdrive cartridge but if you release something on microdrive you're only going to sell it to people with microdrive."
- 3 A device for inserting microelectrodes into the brain.
"The microdrive was invented so that electrodes could be lowered into the brain in order to isolate new neurons."
Example
More examples"One-inch disks typically held about 8 to 10 GB and microdrives were either 2 or 4 GB."
Etymology
From micro- + drive. In the sense of "miniature hard disk", originally a trademark.
Related phrases
More for "microdrive"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.