Thus consumer storage growth will be a driver in cost effective digital storage provided by hard disk drives.

FORBES: Digital Storage Needs the Right Stuff

This model is driving the growth of digital storage in data centers and thus the sale of hard disk drives, tape storage and flash memory used in enterprise storage tiers for these data centers.

FORBES: Changing Digital Storage Requirements for Clouds and Mobile Devices

It may be too early to write an obituary for Hitachi GST but it seems likely that calendar Q1 2012 may be the last quarter for a company that has roots stretching back to the beginning of the digital storage industry and the first hard disk drives.

FORBES: Hitachi GST -- Last Hurrah for A Hard Disk Pioneer?

Hard disk drives provide high capacity cost effective digital storage and thus we think that the decline in HDD shipments in 2012 will likely not continue.

FORBES: Why We Should Expect HDD Growth Later this Year

Figure 2 in the accompanying power point file shows historical storage areal density (AD) growth for HDDs (this is directly related to the amount of digital storage that can be put on a disk in a hard disk drive) from Q1 2000 through Q1 2011.

FORBES: Why Government Regulators Should Approve Hard Disk Drive Company Consolidation

Consumer devices use common digital storage technology such as flash memory, hard disk drives or optical discs.

FORBES: Will You Remember Me When I am Gone: The Persistent Danger of Data Loss

Chanos thinks the disk drive makers will face added pressure from excess supply of digital storage space.

FORBES: Jim Chanos At Ira Sohn: Time To Short Seagate As Death Of PCs Will Collapse Hard Drive Market And Insiders Sell

The storage disk will also be used in future generations of digital audio devices for portable MP3 players.

CNN: IBM claims world's tiniest disk drive

The bulk of digital content in data centers will remain on magnetic storage media either hard disk drives or magnetic tape.

FORBES: Pumping Iron and Keeping Cool