More Ways to Play

This year marks a significant change in the recent history of hard disk drive development. During the final years of the last century and for the last two years the areal density of magnetic recording had been increasing at rates close to or exceeding 100% per year. That meant that each generation of hard disk drive had a digital data capacity that was close to twice that of the previous generation from the prior year’s product. At the same time the average price of ATA/IDE interface hard disk drives (the type normally used in desktop PCs and consumer electronic devices) had been dropping more than 10% per year. In contrast in 2003 the ATA/IDE hard disk drive areal density looks like it has increased by less than 60% annually. Furthermore the price of hard disk drives looks at mid-year like it may decline by less than 10% in 2003. Table 1 and Figure 1 show my projections for magnetic recording areal density growth as well as disk drive average prices respectively. These are major changes for the data storage industry!