Hitachi's soon-to-debut Deskstar 7K1000 will offer a full terabyte of storage that might seem enormous to those who can remember when hard drives were still measured in the megabytes; but at $399, Hitachi's new terabyte drive will cost just under 40 cents per gigabyte, on par with other drives on the market.
In a neck-and-neck race with Seagate Technologies, Hitachi has announced not one but two terabyte-sized hard drives for home users whose thirst for storage space never ends.
The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 is designed for gaming and high-end PCs, such as those found in home entertainment systems where high-def videos chew up a hard drive's space as quickly as broadband connections can download them.
The drive will debut at next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where almost every gizmo- and gadget-maker on the planet will show off the latest cutting-edge toys. At a suggested retail price of $399, the Deskstar costs just under 40 cents per gigabyte.
Hitachi also has announced the CinemaStar 7K1000 for DVRs and computers that record TV directly to hard drives. Like the Deskstar, it can hold up to 1 TB of storage and will be released to consumers in the first half of 2007. Hitachi plans to release a business model later this year, too.
How Much Is Enough?
A full terabyte of storage -- 1,000 or 1,024 gigabytes, depending on which definition you use -- might seem enormous to those who can remember when hard drives were still measured in the megabytes.
"We all know that the demand is growing for digital content storage like audio and video downloads, home movies, pictures, etc., but would one really need or want a 1-TB drive?" asked Shawny Chen, analyst and storage expert at research firm Current Analysis.
But Chen and her firm track a national retail panel that includes Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, RadioShack, and Staples -- and the data is surprising.
"The 500-GB to 999-GB capacity band for internal desktop drives is the only one showing significant growth year-over-year," she said. "It still represents about 6 percent of hard drive unit sales; but a year ago, that figure was a mere 0.3 percent and this is the only capacity band that shows significant year-over-year unit growth."
And the Answer Is...
"Yes, eventually consumers will get to 1 TB," said Chen, who herself remembers when her mother bought a 1-GB external drive that, years ago, seemed huge.
Yet Hitachi's new drives beat older models in more than just space. The Deskstar offers increased shock protection and three "idle" modes designed to help the drive consume less power. In turn, the CinemaStar boasts Smooth Stream Technology designed to maximize the performance of audio and video applications.
When all is said and done, the terabyte mark remains the drives' best selling point, of course -- and a true beachhead.
In a published statement, Hitachi's Shinjiro Iwata, the company's chief marketing officer, said, "The industry's first one-terabyte hard drive represents a milestone that is 50 years in the making."
Hyperbole? Perhaps. But not without at least some cause.
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