Hitachi gets its one terabyte Deskstar 7K1000 drives out the door

We already crunched the numbers: 1TB is a lot. And if you've got $399 to blow, it can be all yours, with Hitachi saying Deskstar 7K1000 shipments have reached "critical mass" this month, after starting out scarce in March. We're guessing if you need one terabyte of data, in a 3.5-inch enclosure, spinning at 7,200 RPM and hooked up to your computer / RAID / iPod, you know who you are, so we won't spend any more time extolling the 7K1000's virtues -- quit your drooling and buy, buy, buy!

[akintz @ Apr 25th 2007 12:54PM]

So it seems this is not available in a PATA version? Some of us keep it old school.

Though it's not like I have $400 to spend on it at the moment anyways.

[Scabies @ Apr 25th 2007 12:59PM]

ooohhhh 1,000GB, how misleading

[akintz @ Apr 25th 2007 1:07PM]

Ya, both claims are pretty misleading actually. Going by regular storage claims, it's probably more like 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. So it's about 931 TB total or 0.909 TB?

Someone correct my math if necessary...

[Matt @ Apr 25th 2007 5:05PM]

A terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (tera being the SI prefix for 10^12) so this is probably correct.

The confusion is between tera (10^12) and tebi (2^40). Most techies don't really seem to care and prefer the more historical use of tera even though it's now deprecated but personally I appreciate the attempt at clarity.

[akintz @ Apr 25th 2007 1:08PM]

Crap, that was supposed to be 931 GB. :)

[Micah Neumark @ Apr 25th 2007 1:09PM]

Who cares. Most people buy laptops nowadays anyways. Where's the 200 GB 7200 rpm 2.5" drive Hitachi promised in the first half of 2007? I know its not past that time yet, but damn, I'm impatient. I want to double the size of my drive. Samsung announced this, but is not selling it yet (at least to consumers). When are these going to come out?

[scott @ Apr 25th 2007 1:14PM]

Go with the normal 5400rpm models that are out now, the 7200rpm 200gb isnt likely to get you much performance increase and will definitely sap power faster...

[The Aggie CEO™ @ Apr 25th 2007 2:13PM]

most people buy NOTEBOOKS!?!?!?!

Suuuuuuuuuuuure

Thats why they stopped making desktops right???

Stop it..........

I've got 4 Desktops in my house AND a Laptop I JUST ORDERED from HP........reason being I need something to do on trips.......

My point is Laptops are cool...........but NOWHERE NEAR as Reliable and cost effective as a desktop.....

so contrary to YOUR beliefs..........

I'm gonna get around 5 or so TRUE 1TB drives when some releases them.........because 1,000GB(Really around 975GB or so) is NOT the same as a TRUE 1024GBs or 1TB...........

Still tho.......its rather good to know we are getting close........it will help me cut down on the 500GB drives and allow for MORE room and space in my Media Server

[Micah Neumark @ Apr 25th 2007 2:23PM]

Contrary to what people seem to think about my comment, I am NOT saying that it is stupid to care about another increase desktop storage. Its great that we have increased to this size. What I was trying to express was my frustration at how slow laptop drives are to increase in capacity.

I apologize for saying most people buy laptops. I guess what I meant is that an increasing number of people. Laptop users are a very significant market nowadays. I would think they would put more R&D time and money towards it. I'm sure they are working hard towards it but it seems like a terabyte drive was more important than increasing the meager offerings on laptops. The difference being that on a desktop, a software RAID is not too difficult. On a laptop, its infeasible to have multiple drives so large built-in (no external drives) drives are the only option.

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 1:35PM]

Things spinning faster typically take more power. The power requirements shouldnt increase for these drives unless it is having to spin something more massive. (more platters, different disk composition) As data density increases so will the amount of data flying past the heads at the same spindle speeds there by increasing performance in like with the increase in data density. I dont know many people who are willing to give up performance for power requirements other than laptop users and manufactures. I for one like the +30% performance increase on 7200rpm drives and decreased latency.

[RyanTV @ Apr 25th 2007 1:15PM]

Well, i personally cant wait till these drop in price a bit... I'll pick up 4 of them and run them mirrored in my RAID array. $400 is a bit much to drop on a HDD, but I'm sure those prices will drop out soon enough.

[FrankTheCrank @ Apr 25th 2007 1:17PM]

That's great.

500GB internal drives can already be had for less than $130....that's just AMAZING.

We should easily see 2TB by summer 08'.

[Kev50027 @ Apr 25th 2007 1:20PM]

Hmm.. I'm still satisfied with my 2 500 GB hard drives and my 150 GB 10,000 RPM, thanks.

1 TB in a drive is nice, but it may be a couple months or maybe a year before it's cost effective.

[apeguero @ Apr 25th 2007 1:33PM]

So then, what does 1tb drive really give you when formatted? Just to think, we are losing more Gigabytes when formatting then one could've ever imagined like 10-15 years ago.

[ohenn01 @ Apr 25th 2007 1:48PM]

its not that its formatting thats taking up the space... its the way that HDD manufacturers declare the size of the drives based on bytes rather than decimal, which windows recognizes the drives as (or vice versa.. all i know is that its a marketing technique versus the way windows calculates drive space) you aren't "losing" any space!!

[austin @ Apr 25th 2007 1:37PM]

Awesome, but that package is pretty much the worst design ever. You'd think they'd want to spruce it up a little bit if it's such a huge deal to get one of those into the market.

[Leoedin @ Apr 25th 2007 1:46PM]

360 movies? Going by the semi-standard XviD movie size of 2x 700MB, or 1.4GB, I make that 714 movies...

I guess they might be using the 4-5GB Mpeg2 sized DVD-rips?

However, it brings another question to light - who stores mpeg2 rips on their computer without transcoding?

[The Aggie CEO™ @ Apr 25th 2007 2:18PM]

Rookies..........lol

hell if I had it MY way I'd put my ENTIRE DVD Collection in .ogm format....that way I can have all my Subtitles and Audio formats compressed in less than around 600MBs for a 2 hour DVD.......

[jeffstubb @ Apr 25th 2007 1:55PM]

This announcement seems a little premature. I don't see any sites with the drive in stock, including CDW which lists it as "usually ships in 4-6 days".

[Kevlar @ Apr 25th 2007 2:02PM]

To clarify for people (as everyone seems SO confused):
Manufacturers claim 1TB*... *=TB is 10^12 bytes.
Most people think that 1TB is 2^40 bytes, and Windows reports 1TB as 2^40.
The ACTUAL formatted space on this drive will show up in Windows as just under 909GB (with a little extra loss due to format info and partition table info). The space difference isn't 'lost', it was just never there to begin with. Manufacturers report the size on the box as 10^12 bytes to artificially increase their size rating. A 900GB Hard Drive doesn't seem as impressive as 1.0TB no?

[Khaytsus @ Apr 25th 2007 3:22PM]

Nice try, but wrong. Notebooks outsell desktops.

http://news.com.com/PC+milestone--notebooks+outsell+desktops/2100-1047_3-5731417.html

[Steve @ Apr 25th 2007 3:25PM]

Actually, laptops did outsell desktops, in May 2005 at least (don't know the current stats):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/04/laptops-outsell-desktops-for-the-first-time-again/

[John @ Apr 25th 2007 2:17PM]

Knowing me, after I dump all my DVD-Rs full of "goodies" onto this drive, it'll crashed and I'll be hosed.

[t-bone @ Apr 25th 2007 2:36PM]

You also should remember that is is harder to build a big 2.5" drive than it is to build a 3.5" drive. A lot more thought has to go into designing a laptop hard drive.

[robert @ May 16th 2007 3:02PM]

No, you're right. More people do buy laptops... Only idiots and tech freaks have desktops nowadays... Last time I walked into a Best Buy, there were atleast 30 laptops and maybe 5 desktops. Just cause that guys stuck in the past doesn't mean the rest of us are.

[highjumpman @ Apr 25th 2007 2:58PM]

And how many of you have collected those 250,000+ songs? Or shot the 330,300+ photos? By the time I have, there'll be a whole new generation of storage media waiting to be bought...

[v_dogg @ Apr 25th 2007 5:02PM]

ya, but i could use up that drive in a second. i know plenty of people who could fill up that space pretty fast

[The Aggie CEO™ @ Apr 26th 2007 6:37AM]

that was for ONE month on 2005...........

got anything more recent???

[genexk @ Apr 25th 2007 3:24PM]

Sweet, but i think it's going to be $99 AR AC in few months. I'll just wait.

[Chuckles McGee @ Apr 25th 2007 4:57PM]

Cost-effective, smost-effective, $400 for a drive is still affordable.

[Broo @ Apr 25th 2007 6:59PM]

I can't wait till the Seagate version is out- too many bad memories of IBM/Hitachi 'DeathStars'...

[Joseph @ Apr 25th 2007 7:31PM]

ANYONE ELSE BOTHERED BY THE PACKAGE DESIGN?

I mean that is pretty ugly, especially for such a remarkable landmark product.

Hitatchi! if you need a designer, give me a call. I will make you a better looking template. your package is ugly and i am willing to help.

[BigD @ Apr 25th 2007 10:12PM]

I made the package design more truthful here:

http://img.photoamp.com/i/Y0GNs.JPG

[Glenn @ Apr 25th 2007 8:14PM]

Still doesn't seem to be available anywhere on the internet... Best Buy, Yahoo Shopping, Froogle, CDW, CompUSA, NewEgg, Amazon...

[Glenn @ Apr 25th 2007 8:48PM]

Or in stores in the San Francisco Bay Area... CompUSA, Best Buy...

I think you guys need to stop posting about the damn drive until normal people can buy one. One sighting on the web or in a real physical store before the next posting about the drive please...

[monsieur_cedric @ Apr 25th 2007 11:24PM]

I need it !!!
Where can I get it from ? (In Canada)

[Someguy @ Apr 26th 2007 6:36AM]

I think I'll wait until the Seagate arrives. This Hitachi is a five platter design, and my experience has been that the instantaneous power requirements are insane.

[Fozzie @ Apr 26th 2007 9:40AM]

when i buy this drive, it better have all that's advertised... (250,000+ songs, 358+ movies, 1000+ hours of video, 333,300+ photos, and 500+ games. by the way, who the hell says 358+? what was wrong with 360+? that's ridiculous! pretty soon we'll have entire algebraic expressions to describe what you can store on these drives:

"y > (25x^2) where x is 100 and y is the number of songs you could fit on this drive"

[Skibit @ Apr 26th 2007 9:54AM]

If you want to buy it, try here:
http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/1tb.htm

[Glenn @ May 2nd 2007 2:41AM]

May 20th apparently, at least for one online vendor

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 11:05AM]

Addressing comments in the order that I read them. "Go with the normal 5400rpm models that are out now, the 7200rpm 200gb isnt likely to get you much performance increase and will definitely sap power faster..." Things spinning faster typically take more power. The power requirements shouldnt increase for these drives unless it is having to spin something more massive. (more platters, different disk composition) As data density increases so will the amount of data flying past the heads at the same spindle speeds there by increasing performance in like with the increase in data density. I dont know many people who are willing to give up performance for power requirements other than laptop users and manufactures. I for one like the +30% performance increase on 7200rpm drives and decreased latency.

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 11:13AM]

The next comment I would address is "Who cares. Most people buy laptops nowadays anyways. Where's the 200 GB 7200 rpm 2.5" drive Hitachi promised in the first half of 2007? I know its not past that time yet, but damn, I'm impatient. I want to double the size of my drive. Samsung announced this, but is not selling it yet (at least to consumers). When are these going to come out?" Typically manufacturers develop technology progressivly. They build one type of drive usually the easiest then start working on the other products. For instance they wont develop a laptop hard drive before a desktop drive. In my experiance with Fibre drives the newest drives are usually double height until the next drive comes out then they goto the smaller form factore. Usually devolopement in one area will impact other areas. The platters on a laptop hard drive are typically smaller than a desktop drive but as the data density increases on one it should on the other as well. With this understanding you should have a positive outlook for future laptop devolopment.

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 11:14AM]

The next comment I would address is "Who cares. Most people buy
laptops nowadays anyways. Where's the 200 GB 7200 rpm 2.5" drive
Hitachi promised in the first half of 2007? I know its not past that
time yet, but damn, I'm impatient. I want to double the size of my
drive. Samsung announced this, but is not selling it yet (at least to
consumers). When are these going to come out?" Typically
manufacturers develop technology progressivly. They build one type
of drive usually the easiest then start working on the other
products. For instance they wont develop a laptop hard drive before
a desktop drive. In my experiance with Fibre drives the newest
drives are usually double height until the next drive comes out then
they goto the smaller form factore. Usually devolopement in one area
will impact other areas. The platters on a laptop hard drive are
typically smaller than a desktop drive but as the data density
increases on one it should on the other as well. With this
understanding you should have a positive outlook for future laptop
devolopment.

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 11:45AM]

Sorry for the double post. Next comment "360 movies? Going by the semi-standard XviD movie size of 2x 700MB, or 1.4GB, I make that 714 movies...
I guess they might be using the 4-5GB Mpeg2 sized DVD-rips?
However, it brings another question to light - who stores mpeg2 rips on their computer without transcoding?" I rip movies directly to my media center pc which had about 4TB worth of storage. This computer outputs to a 65 inch hd television. I also have media center extenders that will accept on the fly streaming transcoded content for codecs it doesnt support. Ripping them directly to disk which is pretty cheap now, takes less time, doesnt degrade the quality. Compressing new 1080 hd content is going to take even more overhead in the future. People who want hd content want it for the uncompromised quality. If you have a lossless compression which has a ratio that justifies the time doing it let me know.

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 11:53AM]

I really enjoy how people are commenting on the package design. I think they shouldnt release any hardware until the box is pretty is an excellent idea. Better yet they should spend the majority of the time working on a pleasing exterior that you are just going to throw away. I am going to apply for a grant to save electronics boxes and make an art gallary out of them. I think the box is fine. People who know the difference between 1000giga bit byte and if its base 8 or 10 know the difference. Would you want them to attempt to explain it on this box?!?! The box says what it is doesnt have alot of crap on it that would take away from what it is. I tend to do research on products before I buy them and the exterior packaging doesnt even factor into my buying decision. If there was a 1TB drive with a picture of a turd on it for 100 bux .. I would laugh my ass of and still buy it. :)

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 12:01PM]

Next "Actually, laptops did outsell desktops, in May 2005 at least (don't know the current stats):" I really like this one. Let me know how many laptops you have ever built from the ground up. Where did you get the case and display and how hard was it to integrate them all. I think the majority of people here would agree that ... your not ever going to build a laptop. I would also think that the majority of our audience have built 1 if not multiple desktop machines. Hazarding yet another guess I would say that most of them have more desktops than laptops. Finally your reference talks about retail pc sales. I would be interested in finding out what the numbers would look like if they included motherboard sales. I would also like to know what % of hard drives are sold individually as compared to in retail pc's. (that would put your comment in the proper context).

[San_Man @ May 2nd 2007 12:18PM]

All of my comments are mine. They arent meant to be ready by any beings other than those of the canine variaity. Should you read them you are doing so at your own risk and agree to not hold me liable for things that I cannot control. Such things as your feelings, your emotional state are under your control. If you cannot effectivly control them inresponse to external stimulous your should learn to compensate appropriatly for your limitations and not hold other people accountable for them.