Hitachi dumps small hard-drives

DRIVE-MAKER Hitachi has been listening to its spam and decided that 1.5in is far too small for a hard-drive.

Instead, according to News.com, it wants to more than double the size of its drives. The electronics maker will focus resources on larger 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives.

The main reason to scrap small drives is because flash drive competition is heating up. The logic is that if punters can put up with piddling amounts of data storage they are going to want it to be fast and flashy.

Fujitsu has already decided to scrap plans for a 1.8-inch hard drives because of the development of flash memory technology.

A Hitachi spokesman said Hitachi will continue to offer 1- and 1.8-inch hard drives. This is because they are used in music players and mobile devices and there are lots of customers for them.

Hitachi has been having a rough time lately. Its hard drives have failed to compete with Seagate's and Western Digital.

The company bought its hard drive arm from IBM for $2 billion in 2002. It is apparently trying to flogging a stake in the outfit to Silver Lake. µ