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You can never have enough storage, especially in a mobile device—be it a PDA, cell phone, smartphone, MP3 player, digital camera, or USB stick.

IBM and Hitachi recently introduced technologies that promise to never leave consumers wanting for storage ever again, well maybe.

A couple of years ago IBM announced plans to use nanotechnology to create a storage medium with a density of a trillion bits per square inch. The company said the project, called Millipede, would be able to store 25 million printed textbook pages on a surface the size of a postage stamp.

Millipede stores data by leveraging thousands (hence the moniker) of ultra-tiny silicon tips to punch dimples and bit patterns onto a nanometer-thick polymer film. IBM compares the principle behind Millipede to the old punch cards used by computers.

(Top image pictures a large number of tips operated in parallel, while the bottom one shows an individual tip creating an indentation in a polymer surface.)

Except now, structural dimensions are scaled down to the nanometer scale with the ability to erase data and rewrite the medium. IBM said Millipede would eventually store more than a terabit per square inch or 19.2 gigabytes per square centimeter.

In the meantime—at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany last month—the company demonstrated a Millipede prototype to store 25 DVDs worth of data in an area equal to a postage stamp. IBM has so far stored 400 to 500 gigabytes in a square inch of nanometer-thick polymer film back at the lab.

Working product (cards and readers) won't hit the market for about two years. These low power memory cards will fit about 100 gigabytes of information into a Secure Digital card package—ideal for a mobile device.

This week, Hitachi unveiled a major breakthrough using current magnetic-based hard disk drive technology. It has doubled the storage density of its drives to 230 gigabits per square inch in the lab.

That means Hitachi CompactFlash form factor Microdrives, used for all sorts of mobile devices, will eventually reach a 20-gigabyte capacity. Today, Microdrives max out at 6 gigabytes. The company also said its standard 3.5-inch hard disk drives will hit the terabyte mark.

As with Millipede, products based on Hitachi's new technology won't hit the market for a couple of years, around 2007.

Its success could depend, in part, on how soon storage products based on IBM's higher-density technology reach store shelves. Millipede’s density is 4x that of Hitachi’s technology, which accounts for its far greater storage potential.