Seagate 12GB 1-inch drive

Seagate has announced that it will begin shipping a 12GB one-inch drive later this year, which the company hopes will increase the gap between flash memory and its higher-capacity hard disks that can fit into similar small spaces. Rob Pait, Seagate's director for global consumer electronics marketing said that the 12GB drive indicates what perpendicular recording may be able to do for the industry. "It's just a start where we see the technology going. Storage capacity will be growing quickly, which will be a key differentiator to flash," Pait said. The executive was not able to talk about Seagate's business relationship with Apple, but mentioned that Seagate "certainly would love to have Apple back as a customer," according to TG Daily. Apple discontinued its iPod mini in 2005, which contained a Seagate 1.8-inch hard drive, and replaced it with the flash-based iPod nano.

by MacNN Staff