In an email announcing its CES meeting plans, Samsung Semiconductor said that the company will at least talk about the world’s first 1.3-inch hard drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The drive is being targeted at “mobile consumer devices”, 1.3-inch HDD, a 1TB 3.5″ RAID Edition HDD and a new 320 GB 2.5″ HDD. OMG 1.3″ HDD!!
For those of you wondering what a 1.3-inch HDD might look like, crack open a hard-disk-based iPod and look at that HDD, then imagine it smaller, noticeably smaller. Sure, it’s just a half inch, but a half inch off the diameter of the platter is a good place to lose some size.
And, with Samsung constantly pushing the data density barrier, it wouldn’t surprise me to see iPods the size of the newest nanos sporting 80 and 160GB HDDs in the not so distant future. A 1.3 inch HDD would also be a major move towards smaller, thinner, lighter laptops without having to resort to the high prices of SSD drives. Well, if Samsung is dropping this tech at CES, you can expect to see it widespread by the middle of next year, likely.
