Following the recent growth in popularity and availability of disk drives for small devices, standards are now being created to ensure that this small drives can be used in many different handheld systems.
A new hard drive has been released by Hitachi that can hold up to half a terabyte of information, which will be especially useful for storing audio and digital video material.
In a move that will be welcomed by businesses and consumers alike, HP and Panasonic have agreed to support each other's new recordable DVD formats in their respective devices.
Holographic information storage developer Optware Corporation plans to blaze a trail by becoming the first company to create an industry standard for holographic storage.
The latest release from Apple will allow video professionals, such as editors in production companies, to access centralised storage systems that can be used by up to 64 other people, via a Fibre Channel.
The idea of water coursing through their storage array may fill storage managers with dread, but scientists at IBM's Almaden research centre near Silicon Valley are currently developing a highly modular storage system that does just that.
IT vendors are likely to work more closely together as partners as the market shifts towards providing integrated solutions along the supply chain, according to recent trends observed by IDC.
The outlook for 2005 looks even brighter for smaller businesses with storage products normally designed for big companies being tailored specifically to meet the needs of smaller companies.
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) has sued a Chinese manufacturer of small form factor hard disk drives over alleged patent infringements of HGST's 1-inch hard disk drive.
IBM is going ahead with the sale of its PC operations to China's Lenovo Group, despite a recent revelation from a Securities and Exchange regulatory filing which has found that this sector has been running at a loss for the last few years.
