Summary
Showa Denko, the largest independent magnetic disk manufacturer, has started shipping 2.5-inch hard disks with 334 GB capacity. This disk formats are those used in laptop computers and smaller external hard disk drives (especially where power is off the same USB interface as the data transfer). The storage capacity areal density for these products is greater than 500 Gbpsi, a new record.
Analysis
In the last month Western Digital announced a three disk 1 TB 2.5-inch hard disk drive with storage capacity per disk of over 330 GB. Now Showa Denko (SDK) of Japan, the largest remaining independent magnetic disk manufacturer indicates that it is shipping 334 GB per disk 2.5-inch media. This indicates that terabyte capacity 2.5-inch hard disks will be available from multiple manufacturers in the next few months. This will lead to laptops with well over 600 GB of storage capacity and small external storage devices with storage capacities of 1 TB.
In order to remain competitive with other storage technologies, such as flash memory, hard disk drives must continue to push the storage capacity for each form factor. This has lead to the introduction of 2 TB 3.5-inch drives in recent months as well as a 1 TB 2.5-inch drive. The storage capacity of hard disk drive form factors has been increasing at a rate of 40+% annually in the last few years, roughly paralleling the capacity gains of NAND flash memory.
Higher storage capacities satisfy consumer’s ever growing demand for storage to support higher resolution content and for more user-generated content. Even business users are using more images and videos in their everyday computer activities. There is every reason to think that this trend will continue and the demand for storage capacity will continue to grow.
Thomas Coughlin consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
