Fujitsu wants to play the mini hard drive game

Apparently Fujitsu wants a little of that mini hard drive lovin' that Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Cornice have been digging on lately, and are planning to introduce their own line of 1-inch and 1.8-inch drive sometime later this year. No word on what sizes (or prices) to expect, but all these companies pumping out tiny hard drives can only mean two things: One, that prices are going to plummet, and two, that the manufacturers are going to start jamming these drives into everything possible, including cellphones, PDAs, MP3 players, digital cameras, personal video players, GPS handhelds, etc. And we're perfectly fine with that.

[encosion @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

I'd prefer that they concentrate on large capacity flash media for "ultra" mobile devices like PDAs, mobiles, etc... HDs should remain the storage of choice for less portable / stable devices imo... Speaking from experience of course!

[Ben @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Either way, if it drives down the prices of large-capacity media for cameras, cell-phones, mp3 players, etc, that makes me happy.

[wol @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

c'mon, instead in eyeeing the storage market, they should put more $$ in R&D of battery!
we need more powah!

[Spectre @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Yea I agree we need better batteries / power cunsumption. However, how about some faster / bigger 2.5" laptop drives? They have been stuck at 60GB 7200rpm or 100GB 5400rpm for well over a year with no new releases. Come on Hitachi, WD, Toshiba the now not only laptops but Apple Mini's uses 2.5" too. The current 4000rpm / 5400rpm are SLOOOW as hell and Hitachi 60GB 7200rpm is nice but just does not cut it anymore when there are soon to be 500GB 10k HD for desktops.

[Eric W @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

How the hell can Archos afford to put a 20GB 1" Hitachi drive in the xs200 and sell it for $200? I'm thinking of buying another one just to remove the drive. I love these tiny drives.

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

"How the hell can Archos afford to put a 20GB 1" Hitachi drive in the xs200 and sell it for $200?"

Bulk purchasing fueled by high volume end product sales my friend. Or at least the expection of both of those happening, and then resulting in an overall profit (a somewhat dubious assumption IMHO considering a comparable capacity IPod and all the external validation that comes bundled with each one can be had for only ~$40 dollars more).

I forget which ones, but when the first multi- gigabyte mp3 players started comming out a few years ago there were a couple fairly crappy models that had realatively successful sales because people were doing exactly that. Buying the players simply to harvest the drives inside...

[Joey Geraci @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

there is no such thing as a 20 gig 1 inch drive, it must be a 1.8 inch drive. That is a pretty sweet device, the only downsides being not too flattering design and the kind of ugly green backlight, but pretty good for $200. Most external 1.8 inch 20 gig drives cost more than that.

[Kiwipride (Jacob) @ Dec 19th 2005 12:10AM]

Hey my name jacob can someone please tell me where to buy the toshiba hard drives that are used in the 20gig ipods? i need one caused the hard drive in my ipod corrupted and well is now completely stuffed! and i want to buy some for my self as well!