It’s like mini-me meets a typical hard drive! Well sort of, anyway. Hard drive manufacturers have put their heads together in order to come up with new hard drive standard called CE-ATA. The new hard drive standard will allows real hard drive access to devices such as MP3 Players, mobile phones and other related devices.

Handheld and portable consumer gadgets may soon have their own storage interface, thanks to a new standard being concocted by Toshiba, Hitachi, Seagate, Marvell, and Intel. The group’s proposed CE-ATA (consumer electronics AT-attachment) standard will address the interface requirements of small form-factor drives used in consumer devices such as media players, GPSes, and even mobile phones — devices which are currently experiencing explosive growth. CE-ATA will address issues of low pin count, small size, low voltage, power efficiency, and cost effectiveness.