Hitachi's Mini Hard Drive to Double in Capacity in 2005

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119152,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119152,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is planning to at least double the capacity of its 1-inch Microdrive hard-disk drive within this year, the company says from Las Vegas, where the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show has officially begun. At present Hitachi's most capacious Microdrive can hold 4GB of data, but the new drives, due in the second half of this year, will be able to hold between 8GB and 10GB, said Bill Healy, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing at HGST. n addition to offering more storage space, the drives will also occupy about 20 percent less volume than current models, said Healy. One of the biggest space savings will come from replacing the Compact Flash interface with a ZIF (zero insertion force) connector of the type favored by consumer electronics makers."</i><br /><br />How much smaller can these drives get? Digital media players like the iPod mini and the Creative Zen should get smaller in size and hold more music. I have big hands though so small isn't always better for me. :lol:

[Felix Torres]

Well, if I had to guess. I'd say the Rio is as small as a Hd-based player *with* display as we'll see.
For flash-based players without dispays, I could see an earbud sized player at some point, but not soon...
The whole "how small" wars reminds me of the calculator wars of the early 80's where the japanese got into a cycle of miniaturization that saw full-function scientific calcs with planner features stuffed into a credit card. Similarly, we later saw Palmpilot functionality stuffed into a PC card (Franklin Rex, anybody?).
In both cases the market said ergonomics matter and rejected the ultra-mini's, leaving them as cool design studies and failed products.
For media players it is clear that the size boubdaries are set by the screen sized (which should be as large as possible) battery-capacity (ditto) and portability (which argues in the opposite direction).

Long term, I see two hd player sizes dominating; one pda sized (say, hp19xx), one carbon-sized. The former will handle video; the latter, music and photos.
Me, I prefer large screens since most of my listening is in my car, but the carbon is such a droolworthy piece of jewelry that I might go with one when they hit 20gb next year...