Trend

Small is beautiful

Although hard disks are shrinking physically, their capacities are getting augmented, says Abhinav Singh

Hard disk drives (HDD) can be as small as an inch. Despite that, capacities are getting better all the time. A 1-inch drive can store up to 6 GB, while 2.5 and 3.5-inch drives can store between 100 and 400 GB. Having said that, just a few years ago, one would not have imagined that smaller drives with such high capacities would be available in the market. Analysts say that HDDs with smaller form factors are gaining momentum and worldwide shipments of these micro-drives may touch 3 million units in 2005. Yogesh Kamat, Country Manager-India Subcontinent, Maxtor says, “As the industry evolves, we will continue to see higher capacities in smaller form factors and an array of advanced technologies to accommodate storage growth.” Consumer electronics, client computing and enterprise application players are all clamouring for these drives.

Technology at work

The vast majority of small drives are expected to go into digital cameras and consumer electronics products Sharad Srivastava Country Manager, Seagate Singapore International Headquarters

HDD vendors are augmenting capacities of smaller drives. There are many factors such as the head and the media that go into the hard disk drive. David Rawcliffe, Director, Marketing, Asia-Pacific, Western Digital says, “When the size of the disk goes down there is an increase in cost per GB. Presently there are limitations on storing more than 6 GB of data as a 1-inch HDD has only one platter to store data unlike the 2.5-inch drive that has two.”

Performance issues exist

There are still some performance issues with regard to smaller form factors, especially the 1-inch HDD as it spins slowly. Rawcliffe explains, “The 1-inch drive can spin at a maximum speed of 3,600 rpm whereas the 3.5-inch drive can go up to 7,200 rpm.” To spin a drive faster you need a powerful motor. 3,600 rpm is good enough for video but not for DVD applications. Interestingly, when the 2.5-inch drives were released, around 2 to 3 years ago, their speed was 3,600 rpm, whereas the latest batch of 2.5-inch drives can spin at 5,400 rpm. Right now, the 1-inch drive is yet to be mass produced as the cost per GB is quite high, the market nascent and adoption slow. Vendors expect that the price per GB on a 1-inch drive will come down in the next 6 to 9 months and the rpm rate will rise.

Media, the prime driver

Storage growth will be accommodated by higher capacities in smaller form factors and an array of advanced technologies Yogesh Kamat Country Manager-India Subcontinent Maxtor

The vast majority of micro HDDs are being used in personal cameras and music players. Embedded system designers are working on commercial and industrial designs that take advantage of high-speed, high-capacity small form factor HDDs. Some OEMs have even started embedding these disks on motherboards and blade servers, especially for use as boot drives. Other potential applications include printers, wireless medical PDAs, test and measurement equipment and automotive devices. Sharad Srivastava, Country Manager, Seagate Singapore International Headquarters says, “The vast majority of small drives are expected to go into digital cameras and consumer electronics products.” Small form factor drive production is expected to hit 3 million units this year, driven by the popularity of MP3 players.

MP3 players, PDAs, digital still cameras and digital video cameras all rely on 1-inch drives.

What lies ahead

The sales of the sub-2.5-inch drives will be contributed largely by the surging demand for MP3 players and, down the line, by high-end mobile phones. Portable digital entertainment has never been this popular and hard drive-enabled MP3 players are already becoming ubiquitous abroad. Research agencies estimate that by 2008, at least 8 percent of mobile phones will contain a micro drive.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com