@ doc
i have seen a 500 GB SATA hard drive for a notebook a year ago. it was shipped by alienware. i guess u might have heard of them. they did offer a 1 TB package a year ago, by simply removing the optical drive from the notebook.
A lot of manufacturers have been working on Flash drives, the kind of storage u find in PDAs of yesterday. Just to turn on the notebook instantly. Flash are pretty small in size, compared to the standard notebook hard drives. i dont have my archives on my 9 inch notebook, otherwise i would have posted the pics to make it more illustrative.
during 08 WDC ( western Digital )and Fujitsu did come up with the prototypes for 1 TB as well. Apple is a very aggressive company when it comes to setting new standards. due to the economic situation across the globe they might not bring in the new stuff until fall 09.
as far as iPod classic is concerned it did come with a 80GB & 160GB hard drive, but it was replaced during the year with 120GB version. initially it was thought it was due to the regional differences. But eventually they just vanished from the shelves.
Apple is using flash memories in their smaller devices and ipod touch. they are performing pretty good, and there is a very high possibility that the classic might be getting a newer version with a extended falsh memory instead of the normal hard drive.
I have not been reading blogs, i am professionally associated with a hardware manufacturer for quite some time. But as i have already written in my previous posts, that due to the economic situations, we may not be seeing new stuff in the consumer electronics.