“Toshiba’s storage division today said that it has produced the world’s highest-capacity, 1.8-inch hard drive with 100GB of storage. The new drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording, where bits are aligned vertically on the platter, to achieve the new record-setting density,” Electronista reports.
“Toshiba plans to start manufacturing the 100GB model in January,” Electronista reports.
Full article here.
“The drives are about the same size as a PC Card and are commonly used in music players, like Apple Computer’s iPod, and compact laptop computers,” Martyn Williams eports for IDG News Service.
Williams reports, “Toshiba first developed a 1.8-inch drive in 2000. The device, which was at the time the highest capacity such drive available, could hold up to 2GB of data and cost around $740 at the time. Today the drives have not only risen in capacity but also fallen in price to the point where an Apple iPod, which includes an 80GB drive and color screen, costs $349.”
Full article here.
This wouldn’t exactly be so bad in a smallish laptop or tablet either…
it’s almost time for the iPod to become the portable HD you can hook into any Mac and use it like it was your home one. (Apps, Fonts… etc.)
Depends on the specs for wear and tear. The past 1.8-inch drives supposedly were not made to do the day to day operation of a computer.
Who knows, we can only wish.
Yeah, this will make a kick-ass iPod, but it’s even better for making a substantially smaller/lighter laptop.
Apple’s the major consumer of Toshiba 1.8″ drives. I think it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll see these in an iPod Real Soon Now.
-jcr
What size are movies downloaded from the iTS? 80Gb are quite alot of movies in high quality. Do you really need an additional 25%?
“Do you really need an additional 25%?”
Yes. I can see where my music collection will exceed 80gb in size within the next couple of years and it wouldn’t take that much longer before it would grow beyond 100gb. I’m sure there are many people who have large collections that they would like to keep on their ipod. More storage capacity is a good thing as long as it is reliable.
And with higher capacity HDs may soon come less compressed audio tracks from iTMS
the amount of files you need to store expands to fill the storage available.
Relentlessly!
The music on my iPod is in Apple Losless code; so, for me, 100 GB is nowhere near too large.
This is great for iTV
Someday, I’ll re-rip for lossless…
Maybe someday, we’ll get original studio multrack recordings instead of mere stereo. Imagine the remix possibilities…
And then there’s video…
We’ll always find a use for more storage.
The electronics industry is so incestuous.
The same company that supplies iPod with its hard drives (at least the non-flash based ones) is the same company that builds the Zune — which for some reason can only be made so far in one model at 30gb.
It’s like you have to cheer for Toshiba on this one thing, and against them for the lackluster Gigabeat-turned-Zune other thing.
Weird.
Never can have too much money, too good looking girl friends, too fast a car.
Never can have too large a hard drive, too much memory, too fast a computer.
I re-ripped my music collection to lossless, and like Macaholic said, “the amount of files you need to store expands to fill the storage available. Relentlessly!”
With hundreds of hours of video digitized, I now find I have over seven terrabytes of online storage.
Wait ’til we start creating life forms online – characters that think, ask questions, and travel (online) on their own. Maybe Google is already visualizing that.
…and eventually the li’l bots that harvest our data will take over our lives.
I use my iPod when I travel to store my photos, on my trip to Africa I took over 5200 photos @ 6.3 MP RAW and that took up about 35 Gb, I would have taken more but that was all the room I had on the iPod besides my music, and I didn’t want to lose my tunes! I would buy a 100 Gb iPod, or I should say I WILL buy one if they come out.
Whoa! Slow down there, people.
I put off buying my 40GB iPod for as long as I could. Decided to buy one in May 2003 but I held out until January 2004 after Macworld because Toshiba was making drives that would have been perfect for an 80GB iPod. I ripped all my 700+ CDs losslessly, so I needed the capacity.
Times have changed and we expect more than we did just a couple of years ago, so the pace at which Apple adds capacity may increase, but that 100GB iPod could still be a way off.