Hitachi announced it would be shipping 2.5in hard drives with capacities up to 100GB for notebook computers by the end of 2004.
The Travelstar 5K100 and E5K100 hard drives spin at 5400rpm and are available in 40GB, 60GB, 80GB and 100GB capacities. They are 9.5mm in height, and consume relatively little power, the company said in an announcement. Both the 5K100 and E5K100 offer parallel ATA and serial ATA (SATA) support
HGST is aiming more of its small-diameter hard disc production at consumer electronics applications and believes that increasing numbers of consumers who are considering buying notebook computers want to have more than the 40G bytes of storage.
The company believes the consumer electronics portion of the market was about 10 percent in 2004. The company expects this share to grow to about 15 percent in 2003 and to grow to about half the entire hard disk market in 2007.
In May, HGST said it was doubling to 60m units in the annual production of its 1-inch Microdrive, 2.5-inch Travelstar and 3.5-inch Deskstar product lines and was investing $200m to upgrade its factory in Thailand, where these drives are made.
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