Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), a new joint venture between IBM and Hitachi, today announced plans to squeeze four gigabytes of data onto the 1-inch Microdrive, known as the world’s smallest hard disk drive. With considerable advances in miniaturization technology thanks to the Pixie Dust concept originally developed by IBM, HGST engineers have overcome magnetic recording challenges associated with developing hard disk drives of this size, and expects the 4 GB Microdrive to be available in the Fall of 2003.
Source:http://www.infosync.no/news/2002/n/2843.html
The new drive will use ultra-miniaturized components, including a new read-write head that is half the size of its predecessor and results in a 40-percent decrease in the height at which the head travels above the disk platter. Analogous to a Boeing 747 airplane flying one millimeter above the surface of the earth, the Microdrive’s new head technology, called the femto slider head, is so small that it is equivalent in size to a grain of table salt.
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