Hitachi has released the world's first hard drive with a total capacity of 1 terabyte (1 TB): the Deskstar 7K1000.

The new drive is a milestone for both Hitachi and the hard drive industry. Not only is it the first product to store up to 1,000 gigabytes on a single hard drive - beating Seagate to the market - but it also comes with a number of innovations. In addition to its Serial ATA II interface, it is the first hard drive that carries as much as 32MB of cache memory, and it is Hitachi's first 3.5" drive to implement perpendicular magnetic recording technology (PMR).


April 17, 2007 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Hitachi Delivers One-Terabyte Hard Drive to Fanfare, Ranked ''Superior'' in PC World Review
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today announced that its Deskstar™ 7K1000, the world’s first one-terabyte hard disk drive (HDD), was ranked at the top or near the top across the PC World Test Center’s test suite. As a result, PC World ranked the Deskstar 7K1000 a top score of “superior” on its tests, calling it a “formidable performer.”

This is the first of a series of independent product reviews that showcases the powerful combination of industry-leading capacity and high performance, which Hitachi has brought together in the one-terabyte Deskstar. This milestone product is a 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM hard drive, designed for desktop computers, media-center PCs, gaming machines, digital video recorders, personal storage and other applications requiring ultra-high storage capacities.

“The results of the PC World review provide strong evidence that we have delivered a product with the performance and capacity demanded by today’s consumers,” Shinjiro Iwata, chief marketing officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “But aside from the unmatched capacity in a single hard drive, the Deskstar 7K1000 represents a technical and cultural milestone that speaks to the revolution we are experiencing in personal data storage today.”

The Deskstar 7K1000 began shipping to retailers and online retailers at the end of March 2007, meeting Hitachi’s commitment to ship the world’s first one-terabyte hard drive to retail customers within the first quarter of 2007. As demonstrated in PC World’s test suite, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive delivers superior performance, as well as leadership capacity, to meet the needs of consumers who want to create, share and store their digital information in ever increasing volume.

Citing several testing parameters, PC World Test Center found that the Deskstar 7K1000 was the fastest on a file search test, requiring just 151 seconds to search for a text string in the 11.7GB of content that was placed on the drive. In addition, among the various testing sequences, the Deskstar terabyte HDD tied for the highest marks on the Test Center’s ACDSee Test, requiring only 513 seconds to perform scripted tasks like searching and converting files from one format to another.

The Deskstar 7K1000 is built on the industry’s most reliable perpendicular magnetic recording technology, allowing Hitachi to extend capacity beyond that available in current 3.5-inch hard drive products. Hitachi’s terabyte hard drive features a 3.0Gb/s Serial-ATA (SATA) interface and large 32 MB data buffer to provide the performance required for high-end PC applications.



Pricey
The Deskstar 7K1000 has to be considered very expensive among the field of internal hard drives that we've tested. On a cost-per-gigabyte basis, the difference between the Deskstar 7K1000 and our least expensive drive, the $150 Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ, doesn't seem so large: The difference is just 10 cents per GB (40 cents per GB for the Hitachi versus 30 cents for the Samsung). But multiply that difference across 1000 gigabytes, and suddenly the $399 price feels a smidge high.

I still remember paying $250+ for a 10gb drive. If I needed the space I would consider it.

That's a lot of porn...

Quoted: That's a lot of porn...

Wow that didn't take long

Quoted: Quoted: That's a lot of porn... Wow that didn't take long

I had hoped to be first.

$400 is not a bad pricing point for that many pirated movies, cds and video games though.

$4/gig isn't bad.

so after formating you get 930gb.  Not "quite" a terrabyte.

Quoted: so after formating you get 930gb.  Not "quite" a terrabyte.

Not formatting. Just the Binary vs. Decimal labelling.

Marketing wins on packaging.

and dont forget bad sectors. Dont even wanna imagine how many those have

all new HDD's have bad sectors, the smaller the individual info clusters are, the more likely they hard drive will have bad sectors from manufactoring

I'm assuming quad 250GB platters?  The article does't say.  If it's twin 500GB platters that would be impressive.  

When it craps out, it'll be the Deathstar.

Quoted: I still remember paying $250+ for a 10gb drive. If I needed the space I would consider it.

Hell I remember paying that for a 210MB harddrive. I don't ever recall being able to fill that thing.

That is a lot of pr0n

Quoted: I still remember paying $250+ for a 10gb drive. If I needed the space I would consider it.

I still remember paying $2000 for a 486 computer/printer with a 275MB hard drive

Quoted: Quoted: I still remember paying $250+ for a 10gb drive. If I needed the space I would consider it. I still remember paying $2000 for a 486 computer/printer with a 275MB hard drive

I remember working on PC's with 30MB hard drives. And they were huge, heavy tanks. And we used to think that 64K of RAM was good!

And we wore our cardboard shoes in the snow, uphill... BOTH ways!!!

I've been in the IT business for WAY too long.

Great, they broke the 1 terabyte barrier. Good job.

Now lets do something about access and transfer speed. No gains have been had in this area in eons.

Sweet. Now they need to do something about overheating processors, videocards, and videocard/motherboard compatibility.

Outstanding ! I was looking at the LaCie 1TB drive but it's a little more $$. Now maybe I can get all of my music on one drive.

No chance I'd pay that much for a Deathstar.

Those things were a click-of-death POS. Samsung or WD all the way.

eta: Besides, single point of failure. I have a TB RAID 5 array (technically 750G) and it was only $320 for 4 250G drives.

Old news.  Shared this with my students last week during one of my "Science in the News Segments."  When I told them it would hold nearly two years of music swithout repeating a single song, they were impressed.

Sadly, they wanted to fill it with rap.

Quoted: When it craps out, it'll be the Deathstar.

I am surprised it took this long

I have been running twin 400 gig drives for quite awhile now.  

Quoted: That's a lot of porn...

Funny, that was my first thoguht as well!

To fucking long to format or God help you if you have to transfer all the files off it... WOW!!!

400 bucks for the first terra drive on the market?



HEEEEEEELLLLLLL YEAH!      Where can I get me one?

Quoted: Sweet. Now they need to do something about overheating processors, videocards, and videocard/motherboard compatibility.

They already have, it's called reading specifications.