Disk Drive Leader Seagate In Harmony With iPod; Songs Eat Up Storage; More and more, a home is where the consumer electronics hard drive is.(INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY)

Byline: BRIAN DEAGON

The disk drive industry is in tune with the success of digital music players, video recorders and other consumer electronics wares.

In the past 18 months, disk drive sales to the consumer electronics market have doubled, says Brian Dexheimer, executive vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at No. 1 disk drive maker Seagate Technology. In that same span, sales to computer makers and business markets have risen less than 10%, he says.

"The market in consumer electronics is looking fantastic," said Brian Alger, an analyst at investment bank Pacific Growth Equities. "Since the start of the dot-com era, everyone has been talking about widespread access to information and entertainment anywhere and any time. All of that requires lots of storage."

Tripling In One Quarter

Signs of growth abound. Seagate says it sold 400,000 of the one-inch-diameter hard drives …