The hard drive inside
Hitachi's CinemaStar DVR. These drives would hold far more
data than the smaller 1-inch and 0.85-inch diameter
microdrives now on the market, yet take less space and
consume less energy than the 1.8-inch drives found in
standard-size iPods and mini-notebooks.
"It gives you more competition with flash and doubles the
capacity over 1-inch," Healy said.
Discussions are only preliminary, but such a move could help
manufacturers of hard drives--a technology that celebrates
its 50th year in 2006--expand their position in the consumer
electronics market.
Consumer electronics have served as a lifeline for
drivemakers, which tend to bounce in and out of
profitability. Hard-drive shipments for consumer electronics
will grow by about 35 percent this year, expanding from
about 60 million units to over 80 million units, said John
Donovan, an analyst at research firm TrendFocus.
Overall, the hard-drive market will increase 18 percent,
from 380 million in 2005 to 450 million drives in 2006. Most
will still go to the PC industry.
Many of these drives measure 3.5-inches across and go into
digital video recorders and TVs. Hitachi, for instance, has
released a TV in Japan that has a built-in digital video
recorder (DVR) with 1 terabyte of video storage.
Hitachi is rolling out a new line of drives this week for
DVRs. The CinemaStar hard drives have been tweaked to run
more quietly than their desktop counterparts, the company
said.
The drive industry, however, has lost some of its luster for
music players. Hardware makers began inserting microdrives
into music players in 2003, and their popularity zoomed
after Apple Computer put one inside its iPod Mini in 2004.
It was a watershed application--drivemakers have been
looking for a high-volume application for microdrives since
IBM (which sold its drive division to Hitachi in 2002)
invented them in 1999.
The honeymoon was short-lived. Apple released the iPod nano
in 2005. It relies on flash memory, which is more expensive
but faster than microdrives. Microdrives have landed inside
some phones and video cameras, but mostly only in high-end
models.
"The microdrive is tough right now," Healy said. "Flash has
certainly come in and affected that business."
Increasing the diameter size would expand storage so that
the 1.3-inch drives could be used in video players.
Currently, one-inch microdrives max out at 8GB (too small
for conveniently storing lots of video), while 1.8-inch
drives can pack in 80GB. A 1.3-inch drive would provide
storage somewhere in between and conceivably provide it as a
far lower cost than flash memory.
"You'd have more space on the platter, but it all depends on
what the customer base says," said Rob Plait, the director
of global consumer electronics marketing at Seagate
Technology. "The disk drive industry has been talking about
the technology for a few months."
Donovan at TrendFocus warned, however, that getting the
cellular companies to accept these drives could be an uphill
battle. The 1.3-inch drives could easily fit inside a cell
phone, but a phonemaker may not believe that their customers
want that much storage.
Drivemakers have ruled out shrinking the size of drives.
That would raise the cost and reduce storage size, making it
even harder to compete against flash.
Hard-drive capacity, Donovan added, continues to grow about
40 percent annually, thus doubling hard-drive capacity every
two years. In the late '90s, drive capacity had doubled
annually.
CinemaStar turn
When it comes to its new line of drives, Hitachi says slower
is better.
The CinemaStar drives are essentially DeskStar
drives--Hitachi's PC line--tweaked to run more quietly,
Healy said. The seek function, when the drive is looking for
data, runs slower than on desktop drives. This allows the
platters to spin at a lower rate and reduce noise;
consumers, however, don't experience a drop in
performance--or video-flicker--because it is easier for the
drive to find the next scene in a movie than it is for it to
find other types of data.
"You are reading long block lines, so you can slow down,"
Healy said. "We've developed algorithms so you can run the
drive differently."
The drive head also moves off the surface of the drive
platters as much as possible to reduce aerodynamic
resistance on the head. That resistance is generated by the
spinning platters, another source of noise.
In the future, Hitachi may try to take out some of the air
inside the drive chassis and replace it with a different gas
to further reduce aerodynamic resistance, Healy added.
The CinemaStar drives, which sport a 3.5-inch diameter
platter, range in capacity from 80GB to 500GB. They will be
sold to consumer electronics manufacturers and PC makers.
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