Toshiba"s tiny high-capacity hard drives are hitting new highs: The company is announcing 10GB and 20GB versions of the series.
Measuring 1.8 inches across--about the diameter of silver dollar coin--the double-sided, single-platter drives premiered at 2GB in May 2000 and expanded to 5GB in June 2001.
Toshiba has doubled the capacity in the 10GB model, and quadrupled it for the 20GB model, by adding a second double-sided platter. At last week"s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, several companies including Creative, RCA, and SonicBlue unveiled handheld music players that use 2.5-inch laptop-style 10GB and 20GB hard drives in paperback-size devices weighing about 10 ounces.
The new Toshiba drives could match that storage in players about half as large. Drives of 1.8 inches are the optimum size, says Toshiba spokesperson Amy Dalphy. "There are a lot of [players with] 2.5-inch hard drives out there, but they"re big."
The most notable application of Toshiba"s 5GB drive is probably the Apple iPod MP3 player, which can store upward of 1000 songs. Though neither company will confirm that the iPod uses Toshiba"s drive, representatives of both companies acknowledge Toshiba is the only one producing a 5GB drive small enough to fit in Apple"s music player.