Ok so when I talked to Hitachi back on Jan. 4th, about its decision to can their smallest HDDs, I specifically asked if the business decision was tied to an some alleged deal to sell off its HDD division and they said no.

Maybe what I should have asked was if they're planning to spin off the HDD division as reports from several news organizations are running amok with the rumour that Hitachi is chatting with Toshiba and Fujitsu about a new joint-company focused on just hard drives and other storage systems.

No one's going on record anywhere and media outlets are quoting "inside sources" and anonymous ex-Hitachi execs. But it does make sense when you remember that Fujitsu also dropped plans to push out a new line of 1.8-inch hard disk drives.