Hard-drive manufacturer Cornice will unveil new microdrives at the 2006 CES. The new Dragon series drives will come in either 8GB or 10GB capacities (up from 4GB and 6GB). While capacity has grown, physical size will shrink again with the new drives being the size of a book of matches. This is a 40 percent reduction in size, enough for Cornice to call these the market’s smallest hard drive!
Cornice expects that the new drives will retail with prices around $18.50 per gigabite ($148 USD for 8GB and $185 USD for 10GB).
The benefit of smaller drives with more capacity will likely be seen in smaller devices such as digital audio players, handhelds and cell phones. Cornice has also developed a new USB stick to hold the drive.