jmke

Capacity on notebook drives will increase as well. In the first half, the company will release a 2.5-inch-diameter 200GB drive that spins at 7,200 revolutions per minute, and follow it up in the second half with a 2.5-inch-diameter notebook drive that will spin at 5,400 rpm and hold about 250GB. Hitachi's largest 7,200-rpm notebook disk now holds 100GB, while the 5,400-rpm model tops out at 160GB.

In desktops, Hitachi will come out with a drive that holds a terabyte in 2007.

Rivals like Seagate Technology and Samsung will come out with similar products. The actions of these companies, though, collectively underscore how drive makers are trying to woo customers through added features, rather than just capacity size. Notebooks, of course, are one of the fastest growing segments for drives. About 118 million 2.5-inch drives (the standard in notebooks) will ship in 2006 and that figure will likely rise to 224 million by 2010. By then, 2.5-inch drives will hold around 750GB due to technologies such as patterned media.

__________________