Teeny weeny Toshiba drive a record breaker

Toshiba has had its new miniature hard disk drives certified by Guinness World Records as the smallest in the world.

The company's Storage Device Division (SDD) has developed a number of 0.85-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) that measure up at just 0.85 of an inch, which to put into perspective, is smaller than a ten cent coin. It is the first drive to deliver multi-gigabyte storage in a sub-one-inch form factor.

Expected to be available in 2GB and 4GB capacities, Toshiba will start sampling the new drives in the middle of the year, with mass production to begin in late 2004.

The 0.85-inch HDDs are expected to boost the functionality of a new generation of products, including mobile phones, digital audio players, PDAs, digital still cameras, camcorders and external storage devices. Toshiba initially plans to introduce capacities of 2GB and 4GB, and anticipates achievement of even higher densities in the 0.85-inch form factor.

"Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago," said David Hawksett, science and technology editor at Guinness World Records.

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