HGST Ships 1-Tbyte Drive

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today announced that it has met its commitment to begin shipping the world's first one-terabyte hard drive (HDD) to retail customers within the first quarter of 2007. The Deskstar 7K1000 began shipping to retailers and e-tailers in March 2007 with inventories reaching critical mass in April 2007. CDW is among the first organizations to make the terabyte hard drive available to customers. More information is located at www.cdw.com/storage.

Announced at CES 2007, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive delivers superior performance and reliability, 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. At a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), colossal storage capacity is more affordable than ever before.

"Many small and mid-sized businesses are consolidating their storage environments to improve manageability and accelerate data backup and recovery," said Tom Cahill, director of product management at CDW Corporation, a leading provider of technology products and services to businesses, government and education. "Hitachi's terabyte-capacity drive offers organizations an affordable new option to accomplish these goals while helping them to respond to increasing data management requirements."

The Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive delivers ultra-high capacity, which is well-suited for high-performance, gaming and media center PCs and external storage devices. It is built on the industry's most reliable perpendicular magnetic recording technology, allowing Hitachi to extend capacity beyond that available in current products. The 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.

"Delivering the one-terabyte hard drive this year is a monumental achievement not only for Hitachi and the hard drive industry, but also for the end user. 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," said Shinjiro Iwata, chief marketing officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.Leveraging a track record for reliability from previous-generation products, the Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive is built using a 5-platter design with relaxed areal density for greater reliability. To further ensure data integrity, the hard drive features a ramp load/unload design to increase shock protection and Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) to maintain a consistent fly-height during the read/write process.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST)