More firms endorse smaller hard drives

Hewlett-Packard, which boasted in March of its early transition to smaller, 2.5 inch-wide hard drives, has lured new partners to the effort. Initially, HP announced that its ProLiant servers would use smaller drives from Seagate, but HP said Wednesday that Hitachi and Fujitsu have also come aboard.

HP also announced it will use the smaller drives in entry-level models of its StorageWorks Modular Smart Array storage systems. Today's 3.5-inch drives have more capacity and performance right now, but HP expects the smaller drives to catch up in 2006.