Power draw of larger flash cards?

I'm looking to buy myself a 1 or 2 gb CF card for my 6651. I need space for many maps. In the interest of battery life I want the least power draw I can get. My 6651 won't be on a charger while airborne. Neither will my E200 for that matter. So,

I read at many sites that larger flash cards draw more power.
If this is true can someone explain to me why ?
How can I determine the power draw of a particular card ?
Would a 1 gb SD draw less power than a 1gb CF? Why or why not?

don't worry... CF/SD/etc flash memory cards' power consumption is close to zero. they consume less than 1 mA. (even the 100000 GB ones)

How much greater is the power usage of a microdrive, then? Obviously it would be significantly higher due to the moving parts, but by how much?

Cmonex: I thought so but there's lots of misinformation about this out there.

Corporate: IIRC, pcmcia hdds are in the hundreds of MA. Microdrives, perhaps 50-70ma ?I forget exactly but they're many times more hungry than even the largest flash cards as cmonex pointed out.

That would greatly depend on the access pattern. I use a Magicstor 2.2gb as the main data bank on my MP780. Here's what Magicstor has to say about their products:

A microdrive that uses a CompactFlash Type II slot. It is available in 2.2 GB, 2.4 GB and 4.8 GB capacities. Average read-seek time is 10 milliseconds. It uses approximetly 18 milliamps when idle and 275 milliamps when active. The data transfer rate is 3.3 – 6.5 MB/sec.

So if it is mostly idling, it should be ok. But if you are constantly reading data off of it, or writing out a trip log, it will have a significant impact on your battery life.

Thanks for the info, wallly

I think I may stick it out with flash for now, as it seems to me it would make a rather significant difference in battery life I changed to some sort of microdrive-based storage.

The PCMCIA hard drives have even higher power consumption figures, as is expected.

http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/storage/english/spec/hdd/mk5002p.htm

They can be hungry, can't they? I considered a pcmcia hdd for a long time before I stumbled across my 20gb jukebox. It may add another part I need to carry but the effect on my 6651 runtime is negligible. Plus it's no big deal to hang the jukebox off my belt and pop in the usb cable when needed. I shut the 6651 off if I just want music. Pretty good tradeoff IMO.

I don't know if I'll followup with my "external chassis" project considering so far the jukebox has met my needs. Maybe I'll put my 40gb drive in the jukebox and call it a day. Tho I like my chassis idea I may never get to it , time and moneywise