I'm guessing that the first release of Toshiba's drive will be 2GB.
This is enough space for almost three hours of stereo 16/48 PCM
recording.
More interesting than the drive will be its packaging. Cornice, a
competitor, sells its tiny disc product as a bare drive, suitable for
embedding directly on the system board. Hitachi packages their 1
inch drive in a Compactflash Type II card, so it's removable in the
field.
A smaller disc size means much less storage space, and much higher
prices. Maximum storage available today using a one-inch disc is
Hitachi's 4GB Microdrive, list price $500. Go up to a 1.8 inch disc,
and maximum storage increases to 40GB, as in the Toshiba disc used in
the iPod. Price is ~$200, but you can't buy one -- Apple and Toshiba
use the entire production in their music players. A Toshiba drive
with 2.5 inch platter holds 60GB, and costs about $175. These drives
are commonly used in notebook computers, and are used in the new
generation of digital field recorders like the Sound Devices 722 and
Nagra V.
--oryoki
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