“Crash proof, eh?’ I can almost hear Homer Simpson trying to figure out a way to crash these new Cornice crash-proof drives. Scheduled to be unveiled at Consumer Electronics Show in January, these demos are sure to get a few gasps I bet.

Hard-drive maker Cornice will unveil a 3-Gbyte version of its hard drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, executives said.

Cornice, whose hard drives are currently in a few of the low-end players from Creative Technology Ltd., will introduce the new drive with CrashGuard, a technology that latches the drive head in place to prevent loss of data.

Dave Feller, Cornice’s vice president of marketing, said that active consumers are avoiding the iPod from Apple Computer because of its inability to handle vibration. If a CD player or a hard drive-based player is jostled, the drive can’t read or write data. To compensate, MP3 players typically use DRAM as a solid-state buffer memory to keep the music playing while the vibration subsides.

“That’s why when you see all those people dancing in the commercials, they’re holding onto their iPod,” Feller said.

The CrashGuard technology serves to insulate the drives from shock. Rival drive maker Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, in conjunction with IBM, uses an inertial sensor to detect if one of IBM’s ThinkPad notebooks are falling. The drive then automatically removes the read/write head from the drive platter.