(Special Report) - It's no surprise that the hard drive industry is generally the dullest and the slowest industry in the computing market, so whenever hard drive makers have anything to say, we like to listen carefully. During CES, we swung by hard drive makers' booths to see if they had anything interesting to say in regards to the future of the storage industry in 2006 and beyond.

To our disappointment, many of the companies we talked to informed that we can expect large capacity hard drives, especially with perpendicular technology onboard. We asked whether we can expect a speed increase or any other features in hard drives to boost the drive's performance, but companies didn't comment much on that. All we were told was to look for large capacity drives with reduced number of platters.

Western Digital launched its Raptor X drive, which is targeted at the do-it-yourself (DIY) crowd who like to see platters and heads moving live in a functional drive. We also asked drive makers if adding aesthetics taste to the hard drives was the future, but once again, we didn't get a favorable reply.

All in all, the storage industry doesn't appear to be all that exciting in 2006 either. Then again, you never know, companies have a way of saying one thing and doing another.