Hitachi ships its first-ever terabyte drive

HITACHI HAS begun shipping its first one-terabyte hard drive, the largest-ever hard drive to hit the market.

The first installment of the Deskstar 7K1000 hit shops in the US last month, retailing at $399.

A colossal price tag, you might think, but that's enough room to store 333,000 high-res jpg photos, two years worth of MP3 tunes, 80 hours of uncompressed DV camcorder footage, or 125 HD movies.

Launched in Las Vegas at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the drive is based on perpendicular magnetic recording technology and features a 3.0Gb/s Serial-ATA (SATA) interface and 32 MB data buffer.

Shinjiro Iwata, chief marketing officer for Hitachi Global Storage Solutions described the launch as a "monumental achievement" for both the company and the drive industry.

"Consumers' desire to create and share digital entertainment is the primary accelerator for capacity and performance increases in desktop PC hard drives. We are proud of the strength of the Deskstar 7K1000 as it is designed to meet the requirements of PC enthusiasts," he bragged. µ