Regular Gizmodo readers will know that we love to complain about how hardly anyone has been able to make a hard drive-based MP3 player as compact as the iPod. Of course, one of the main reasons why no one has been able to do it has been because Apple bought up almost all of the miniature Toshiba hard drives used in the iPod, leaving none left over for anyone else. But now ZDNet is reporting that this situation is about to change. Hitachi is coming out with its own tiny 1.8-inch 40GB hard drive which should start showing up in MP3 players soon, including a “household name” that they declined to specify.
