A return to growth in shipments of hard disk drives – and the use of HDDs in new types of consumer gadgetry – could help to drive demand for custom power and data cable solutions higher. In recent years, solid-state disks or ‘SSDs’ have risen in popularity for several reasons: they are quieter, they contain no moving parts, they offer fast disk access, and they’re widely believed to last for longer before failing. However, they have never been able to provide as much cheap storage capacity as conventional HDDs, and that is one factor helping hard disks to retain a substantial market share. As time goes on, though, HDDs are increasingly being used in less-usual applications – components analyst iSuppli points out that ‘ultrabooks’, the new, high-performance variation on laptop computers, are incorporating hybrid HDDs with SSDs alongside them. Digital video recording is a further growth segment, as HDDs cater for the massive capacity needed in personal video recorders for high-definition television broadcasts. As these markets develop, cable manufacturers will be on hand to create the custom cable solutions needed for both the power and data connections of disk drives – whether they are HDDs or SSDs – and to make sure that the wiring is as compact as possible within ultra-small portable devices.