60GB iPod - Coming Soon


Toshiba is gearing up to mass produce its 60GB 1.8" drive in July or August this year, InfoWorld reports. Toshiba has already confirmed that Apple is customer for the drive.

60GB drives are already available in rival music players, such as Nomad's Jukebox. However, Toshiba's largest-capacity 1.8" drive is currently 40GB, found in the top-of-the-line iPod.

Toshiba is shipping 350,000 of the drives to Apple in advance of going into full production of the new drive, which will be made in Taiwan by Inventec Corp, the article says.

Toshiba will aim to produce around 800,000 per month of the 1.8" and 2.5" hard drives in the short term, with 1 million per month the target by the end of 2004.

Analysis: So if you had plans for a 40GB iPod purchase, put them on hold for a month or two - you're about to get a 'free' upgrade. This will mean, finally, the iPod's not just a music player, but it will also be a fairly serious FireWire/USB 2.0 hard drive which could easily back up most PowerBooks.