Small yet Vast

Implications: * Hitachi introduced a 500 GB 2.5-inch hard disk drive in January 2008 but the product would not fit into a conventional 2.5-inch hard drive bay  * Fujitsu followed suit with a 500 GB 2.5-inch HDD announcement with a similar thicker drive package  * Samsung announced in March that they would be shipping a 500 GB 2.5-inch drive with the conventional drive thickness found in most notebook computers  * The Samsung product using 3-167 GB disks to achieve this storage capacity and form factor  * The suggested retail price for Samsung’s 500 GB Spinpoint M6 is $299 (about $0.60 per GB)

Analysis: 2.5-inch disk drives are the most popular drive format for lap-top computers.  This is also one of the fastest growing markets for hard disk drives as laptop computers displace “desktop” computers.  As a consequence of this growth in mobile devices it is expected that after 2010 sub-3.5-inch hard disk drives (especially 2.5-inch drives) will be the majority.  

Because of the reduced radius of smaller form factor disks the linear velocity at the outer radius of the disks is less than for a 3.5-inch disk.  This makes it easier to introduce higher linear densities on smaller form factor disks.  In addition higher track densities are possible since the flutter is lower for smaller disk form factors.  Thus new areal density increasing technologies are easier to introduce on smaller form factor drives.    The consequence has been rapid growth in 2.5-inch and smaller hard disk drive capacity. 

Today one can get 500 GB 2.5-inch drives and 160 GB 1.8-inch drives.  This is a 56% growth in available 2.5-inch storage capacity from 2007 and if this rate of growth is extrapolated a couple of years to 2010 the industry could deliver over 1 TB 2.5-inch hard disk drives.   Such drives will probably sell initially for $299 similar to the suggested price of the Samsung 500 GB unit today giving less than $0.30/GB for 2.5-inch drive storage. 

With the size of programs and content increasing and the increasing use of laptops to replace desktop computers this storage capacity will come in handy to many users.   Samsung has been a leader in introducing new HDD areal density technology over the last few years using technology from the remaining disk and head vendors (TDK for heads and SDK or Fuji Electric for disks).  At the same time Samsung has also been a major proponent of flash-based solid state storage, including solid state drives that are being promoted as competing against hard disk drives. 

By 2010 SSDs with 64 or 128 GB capacity could have prices similar to those of my hypothetical 1 TB (1,000 GB) laptop drive.  Clearly these storage products would appeal to different types of computer users!