Yep, you read it right – Seagate has a 12GB 1-inch hard drive on the way, according to TG Daily:
2005 was an important year for smaller form factor hard disks as 1.8″, 1″ and 0.85″ devices quickly gained popularity as portable storage products and mass storage solutions in hand held products. But especially the 1″ form factor also had to deal with increased competition from flash memory manufacturers: Not only grew the capacity of flash, but also prices dropped by an estimated 50% – which was reason enough for Apple to switch from a hard drive to a flash memory chip in its latest iPod model.
How this will affect the ultraportable market has yet to be determined, but it provides a viable alternative to those companies looking to make very small Windows-running notebooks (in the 7-9 inch range) and who were considering loading them up with some kind of flash memory.