We reported earlier about how Seagate’s is planning a harddrive with a 1TB storage capacity and the market leader spoke of a launch within 6 months. However, Hitachi has now slapped Seagate on the fingers by announcing that it will launch its first 1TB harddrive this quarter already. Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 will be the name of the new model and will bring Hitachi back to the leading position, when it comes to storage capacity. Its Deskstar 7K series have been at the top for some time when it comes storage capacity but never really been at the top spot.
But Hitachi has never backed down when it comes to using many platters inside its harddrive and this is very much the case with 7K1000. It will supply the disk with five 200GB platters to reach the final capacity at 1TB.
This relates to the information Seagate shared when it claimed that it will use fewer platters than it competitors, which then most likely hinted at what Hitachi, and others, were doing.
Except from the storage capacity it seems Hitachi has succeeded with the pricing, the recommended price will be 399 USD which is far better price/GB than what Seagate’s 750GB harddrive offers. To keep track of 1TB data the SATA model of 7K1000 has been supplied with a whopping 32MB memory buffer while the PATA models will have to settle for 8MB.