Removable Hard Drive Shrinks to 1.8 Inches

Totally insane I should say! However, I still await the day hard drives can be implanted into a single strand of my hair. Thanks to youm0nt for posting the article in the BPN section.

A consortium of companies developing a removable hard disk system for consumer use called iVDR (Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage) plan to unveil a prototype 1.8-inch drive with a serial ATA interface for the first time at the Consumer Electronic Show in January, an iVDR consortium representative says.

CES, which takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada, will also be the first time the iVDR system has been shown outside of Japan.

Three prototypes are expected to be showcased there, including a 2.5-inch iVDR disk with a parallel ATA interface, and a 2.5 and 1.8-inch iVDR drive with a faster and less costly serial ATA interface, said Toshiaki Hioki, a consortium representative from Sanyo Electric. The drives will be shown at the booth of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, a new hard disk drive company Hitachi established after it acquired IBM 's hard disk unit in June.

Currently an iVDR disk can hold up to 80GB, which is expected to be doubled by the first quarter next year, and costs around $166 to $249), Hioki said. "This price may be acceptable for a computer peripheral but not for consumer electronics," he said.

For consumer electronics, such as a video recorder, the consortium aims to reduce the disk price to be under $80, Hioki said.

News source: Pc World