Hitachi's 500GB hard drive, plus, 8GB and 10GB 1-inch MicroDrives

We've heard some whisperings that Seagate has a 500GB hard drive of their own in the hopper, but Hitachi announced yesterday that they're coming out with a 500GB 3.5-inch desktop PC hard drive. The other news is that they've shrunk their 1-inch MicroDrive so that it takes up one-fifth less space and more than doubled it's capacity to 10GB (there's also an 8GB version, too). If you want to connect the dots, Apple uses Hitachi's 4GB 1-inch MicroDrive in the iPod mini, so it's not entirely inconceivable that an 8GB or 10GB iPod mini could turn up sometime this year.

[Andy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Any word on pricing of those 8G and 10G microdrives? That is a pretty impressive feat! Now we can start talking about getting those in more digital camcorders like the Everio!

[Joey Geraci @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

4gig ipod mini at 199, 8gig at 249, 10 gig at 279
I can dream can't I.

[christopher wanko @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Dream bigger. 10Gb in your cellphone or PDA.

[holophile @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

I thought the concensus was that Apple was going to announce a 5GB mini sometime soon, like next week. I really doubt they would release two new sizes by the end of the year.... that's too soon.
Personally, I could never see why everybody thinks they're only going to release a 5GB revision. Why would they only meet the competition's specs when they could surpass them with a 6GB model?
Hitachi announced one of those at least 6 months ago, so it seems conceivable to me they could've entered production by now.

[picasso @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

The step from 4GB to 5GB wouldn't really matter on the iPod mini. But 10GB in such a small device would be really cool ;)

[Falkenad @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

8 gigabytes, perhaps. But 10? If that was the case then the people would choose the mini over the 4G iPod.

[mikhail @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Yes, Falkenad - if the 4G iPod were still the current model. But it won't be. If the 5G ranged from 40 to 80 GB, accepted images direct from digital cameras, and had wireless connection to headphones and/or Airport Express, it would surely have its own appeal!

[Liquid @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Out of curiousity, i'll be getting a 5gb Zen Micro delivered tommorrow..would it be possible to swap out/hack the 5gb for the 10gb or 8gb micro drive at some point in the future??

[Izham Azman @ Dec 19th 2005 12:09AM]

Any whitepaper on this cool 4GB 1-inch microdrive.