Seagate, Hitatchi debut new 1-inch 6GB drives
updated 11:10 am EST, Thu February 24, 2005
New 1-inch 6GB drives
Seagate and Hitachi both announced new , unveiled yesterday too. Certainly when news of a higher-capacity iPod Mini emerged late last year, it was suggested that the new machine would not contain a Hitachi drive as the first version had done, Apple allegedly having been annoyed with the problems the drive maker experienced ramping up production of its 4GB 1in unit, the Microdrive 3K4."
The report says that Hitachi's new 6GB "3K6" drive will ship in the next few months with a weight of 16g and with either of two interfaces: CompactFlash Type II connector or an IDE interface. "The drive can withstand 200G of operating shock and 2000G of shock when the unit is in stand-by mode, Hitachi claimed. It spins at 3600rpm, and provides an average seek time of 12ms. There's 128KB of on-board buffer RAM."
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Supplier NDAs?
Is it possible that part of the supplier's deal with Apple, was to keep news of upcoming microdrive capacities under wraps until Apple released the updated iPods?
I mean it doesn't take a genius to add 2+2 to figure that if one of the 3 microdrive makers is coming out with a new, higher capacity, than it's likely to make its way into the iPod.
After Hitachi announced their 60GB microdrive, everyone figured the 60Gb iPod was in the works, and that blew Apple's/Steve Job's gasket.