Hitachi and Seagate are expected to launch their first 1 terabyte
desktop hard disk drives in the first half of 2007, taking
advantage of the perpendicular recording technology.
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced it will come
out with a 3.5-inch-diameter 1 terabyte hard drive for desktops
in the first quarter of 2007. The drive uses five 200GB platters
spinning at 7,200RPM. It will be available with Serial and
"parallel" ATA interfaces. Serial ATA flavors of the 7K1000 will
boast a whopping 32MB of onboard cache, while IDE models will be
stuck with only 8MB. A four-platter 750GB model is also on the
way, according to Hitachi. There is also an enterprise-class
version of the 7K1000 in the works. That drive isn't being
officially announced today, but it's expected to be released in
the second quarter of this year. Hitachi says samples are already
being tested by its OEM customers.
The company will then follow up in the second quarter with the
CinemaStar 7K1000 3.5-inch terabyte drives for set top box and
DVR applications, bundled with software called Audio-Visual
Storage Manager for easier retrieval of data, and corporate
storage systems.
The Deskstar 7K1000 will cost $399 when it comes out.
Currently, Hitachi sells 3.5-inch drives that hold 500GB of data.
Rival Seagate Technology will come out with a 1 terabyte drive in
the first half of 2007. According to the company, this
second-generation drive to use perpendicular recording technology
will hit the terabyte mark using only four platters. A
four-platter terabyte drive would need to pack 250GB per platter,
which is a much higher areal density than Seagate's current
Barracuda 7200.10, which tops out at less than 200GB per platter.
The boost in capacity for desktop drives comes in part through
the introduction of perpendicular recording technology to
3.5-inch-diameter drives. In perpendicular drives, data can be
stored in vertical columns, rather than on a single plane. Drive
makers have already released laptop drives, which sport smaller
2.5-inch-diameter drives, with perpendicular recording.
The two companies, along with others, will tout their new drives
at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and will
show off hybrid hard drives, as well.