Hard disk capacities to go upto 2.5 inch 500GB, many times in the future.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Seagate-Showing-Monster-Hard-Drive.htm
http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsroom/releases/article/0,1121,3301,00.html
http://www.techworld.com/storage/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=258&blogid=3

That's good news for the silicon team and others.

Good for storing HD footage, but there is almost nothing
that mentions its speed. When an obvious stat is left
out I worry that this drive's performance may be weak.

I'm not worried about the speed. The more data you pack within the same sq in increases the throughput because more data is moving past the heads. Rotational speed doesn't have to increase to get this benefit.

Once we have a half terabyte in 2.5" drives and 1.5TB in 3.5 drives you will see improved performance as well.

I'm not worried about the speed. The more data you pack within the same sq in increases the throughput because more data is moving past the heads. Rotational speed doesn't have to increase to get this benefit.

Exactly! A lot of people get very hung-up on rotational speed and don't realize that the latest 5400rpm notebook drives at 120GB and 160GB capacities will outperform the 100GB 7200rpm drives in most situations. The rotational speeds do tend to deliver faster seek times more consistantly, but that's only part of the equation as well.

Good for storing HD footage, but there is almost nothing
that mentions its speed. When an obvious stat is left
out I worry that this drive's performance may be weak.

Yes, the speed of the latest drives put high quality single disk HD recording in reach. These capacity increases makes low cost lossless/visually lossless HD uncompressed footage storage a reality. This is good news for the industry (but these increases normally are, just that some still doubt the practicality of recording lossless/visually lossless work flows). I am still looking into 9mb/s 720p visually lossless low quality video format, but much higher rates/storage are still required for higher quality HD, SHD, UHD video. Next year, the ability for recording and storing the 100mb/s h264 stream off the next Panasonic camera can become a convenient reality.