High-capacity drive shipping next year.

Fujitsu has developed a hard-disk drive suitable for use in laptop PCs and video recorders with a capacity of 300GB, the largest in its class, the company said.

The drive is a 2.5in type with a serial ATA interface and offers a 50 percent jump in capacity over Fujitsu's current most capacious hard-disk drive of this type.

Higher capacity drives are available but they are typically larger and have slower interfaces. In the case of laptop PCs the slower interface means they aren't as fast at handling the digital video files that are now common, while for video recorders the larger size drives lead to bulkier products.

Fujitsu said the drive will be available from late February. The company hopes to sell 1.5 million of the drives during fiscal 2007, which is the period from April to March 2008.