It's a race for the smallest (in physical size) and largest (storage capacity wise) hard drives while the market is hot. This time is Seagate with a 2.5-inch disk drive...

The drive units--about the size of a deck of cards--are designed to allow for smaller storage systems that provide higher levels of performance, according to Seagate. Seagate has named the product, which it demonstrated last year, "Savvio" and expects it to be generally available at the end of the second quarter of 2004.

On a semi-related note, Apple has announced it has begun shipping the iPod Mini that uses a small 4GB hard drive manufactured by Hitachi.