Technology research firm IDC is predicting that the Asia-Pacific hard disk drive market will grow 26 per cent this year. The market, which excludes Japan, is expected to see sales of 270 million units this year, which is is a jump of some 26 per cent compared to a year ago.

The reason for the rise is falling notebook prices, and the rise in demand for consumer electronic products. Most hard disk drives will still end up in desktopsaccounting for some 40 per cent of the market in the region, but it is the notebooks that fuelling extra growth.

|Aother area of growth is in the DVR market. These are your digital video recorders, your hard disk drive-based set-top boxes and game consoles with built-in hard drives like the Sony Playstation 3 or Xbox 360.You can read more here.