Toshiba
Toshiba has now officially announced their new 0.85" Hard Drive as earlier reported.
Toshiba Corporation today announced development of 0.85-inch hard disk drive (HDD), the first hard drive to deliver multi-gigabyte data storage to a sub-one-inch form factor. Toshiba expects to start sampling the new drive in summer 2004 and to start mass production in autumn 2004, at an initial monthly production capacity of two to three hundred thousand units.
The new 0.85" drives will come in 2GB and 4GB capacities and are due in August 2004. No word on pricing, however.
Toshiba's 1.8" Hard Drive technology has been used in the standard Apple iPod since its introduction in 2001. Meanwhile, Apple has gone with 1" Hitachi Hard Drives for the new iPod Mini.
MagicStor
Meanwhile, MagicStor announced a new series of 1" Hard Disk Drives with capacities up to 4.8GB and expect to release 0.8" drives in the future.
These tiny hard drives are one of the limiting factors in the ongoing miniaturization of high capacity MP3 players.
