Hitachi is planning to introduce new laptop hard drives into the market in 2007, all based on perpendicular recording and, most importantly, hybrid hard drive technology.

A "hybrid" drive is basically a hard drive with a little bit of flash memory built into it, so that most of the reading and writing can happen on the flash memory.  This way, the hard drive itself can stay off most of the time, which saves plenty of power and gives you an added boost in battery life.

Currently, the largest laptop drive Hitachi has is a 160GB, but they plan to release a 200GB, 7200RPM hybrid laptop hard drive within the first half of next year, followed by a 250GB, 5400RPM drive in the second half.  They also claim to be able to make a 750GB laptop drive by 2010, which is as large as desktop drives get right now.

Flash memory seems to be getting bigger and bigger every day.  Recently Samsung announced a new process they have developed that enables them to mass-produce much larger flash chips than they already have.  The new technology allows them to stack 16 individual chips together as one single multi-chip package (MCP).  Combined with their current maximum single chip capacity of 1GB, that gives you a 16GB flash chip, which cold be used in all sorts of different portable products.

The production process works by allowing the company to make their flash wafers about 35% thinner than before, which lets them put more chips in the same package.  The height of the overall chip is lowered largely due to a thinner adhesive layer between chips, reduced from 60 microns down to 20 microns.

There is no word on when these new chips will be commercially produced.

In the age of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, all the new burners and players seem to be only for high-definition formats. It’s a shame, because, personally, I don’t have the money for a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive. Well, Plextor has always been there for me…this time, it’s a DVD burner that can burn DVD+R DL discs at 10X.

The PX-755UF is an external drive, supporting both FireWire and USB, and it supports any format you can imagine (except Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, of course). It’s also compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X systems, so you can use it with either a Mac or a PC. While DVD+R DL discs burn at up to 10X, DVD-R DL discs are still limited to 6X, not that that’s really slow.

The PX-755UF will be available in mid-November, for a price of $159.

Seagate has announced a new hard drive with hardware- and software-based data protection built into the drive itself.  The security platform, known as "Drive Trust," meets the security specifications of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), and should be available early next year.

Seagate says Drive Trust is very easy to manage, since it's pretty much all done automatically.  All the data on the drive is always protected, not just some of the data, and only at certain times.  And the security features are independent of the drive itself.

It is unclear at this point just how far this technology will go.  It's being offered first in consumer hard drive, so it's possible it'll be used as an extension of DRM...let's all cross our fingers and hope that doesn't happen.

Samsung didn't hold a monopoly on these for long...Super Talent Technology has released new IDE solid-state drives (SSDs) for use in any computer.  Encased with either plastic or aluminum, these drives fit into a 1.8" form factor, so they'll pretty much go anywhere a conventional hard drive could go.  It's available in 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB capacities--so Samsung still makes the only 32GB drive on the market.

In all there are six models available, with your choice of capacity and casing around the drive (the aluminum casing allows it to operate at higher temperatures for industrial settings).  All of the drives feature the usual low power consumption of flash memory, but the transfer rate is about 17MB/s, which isn't as fast as some we've seen.  As for pricing, the 16GB drive with a plastic casing goes for around $500, which isn't bad.

It doesn't look like much, but the picture above is of a Samsung Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD).  This Samsung drive and others by companies like Seagate are expected to launch at the beginning of next year, about the same time Windows Vista is released.

HHDs are capable of using Windows Vista's SuperFetch feature to load commonly accessed data on flash memory built into the drive.  This way, you don't have to access the drive itself as often, which leads to faster access times, less power consumption, longer battery life, and less heat, noise, and vibration.  Does it get any better?  (I guess a completely solid-state disk is better.)

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of memory modules and flash products, today announced a 16GB solid state disk (SSD) that is fully compatible with industry standard 1.8" notebook IDE drives. Super Talent SSD's employ an industry standard 44-pin IDE connector that is pin compatible with laptop IDE drives. Moreover, they have the same physical dimensions as standard 1.8" IDE laptop drives, making them an easy drop-in replacement for a conventional hard drive. But unlike conventional hard drives, SSD's are built with solid state NAND flash chips, and therefore have no moving parts. The result is a storage device that is far more rugged and reliable than a conventional hard drive with no risk of a head crash. These characteristics make SDD's superb for industrial and military applications where reliability is critical. And since SDD's use only a fraction of the power of standard hard drives they are perfect for extremely low-power environments as well.

Super Talent offers these flash drives in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

Plextor has announced their first PlexEraser drive, the PX-OE100E.  The drive is marketed as a CD/DVD "destroyer": once used on an optical disc, there's absolutely no way to recover the data on it.  Plextor expects the drive to find a home in areas where security is very important, such as government/military or research applications.

The PlexEraser supports CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R DL, and DVD+R DL discs, both in a standard size and the smaller 8cm size.  The average time to destroy a disc is about three minutes for a single-layer disc and six minutes for a dual-layer disc.  It has a 35dB noise rating and offers low power consumption, and works without the need for a PC.  To minimize the number of accidental destructions, the tray on the drive is a bright orange and has several warnings on it (though you know someone's going to do it eventually anyway).

The PX-OE100E is expected to ship to distributors next month for a retail price of $250.

Can't decide between Blu-ray and HD-DVD?  It's not your fault; neither of them is clearly better than the other, and to be sure that you can watch high-definition movies, you're pretty much going to need both.  But that may change: NEC has developed a hybrid chip that can decode both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.

The availability of a chip doesn't necessarily mean much, though.  First, someone has to come up with a player that can read both discs, which would require a specialized laser.  And then there might be legal issues that keep anyone from making such a player.  Either way, NEC has started shipping the chips and expects to sell 300,000 a month starting April 2007.

Lacie have a reputation for making quality storage and backup solutions and their Porsche range of hard drives boast supercar looks and the performance to match. With data transfer rates of up to 480Mbits's via Firewire or USB2 they are just the ticket for photo, video or large mp3 collections. LaCie recently announced increased capacities for its LaCie Hard Drives Design by F.A. Porsche. The new drives reach a phenomenal 500GB in a small, sleek case created exclusively for LaCie by the renowned agency Porsche Design GmbH.

LaCie Senior Product Manager Olivier Mirloup said, "LaCie's awarded Design by F.A. Porsche hard drives are quiet, easy to carry and stack, and now have some of the largest capacities available at a low price per gigabyte. These drives are the fastest, easiest way to add storage to your computer, making room for lots of additional video, audio and music files. And our 1-Click Backup Software simplifies data protection."