Hitachi unveils world's first 2TB desktop drive

The Deskstar 7K2000 spreads its 2TB capacity over five platters

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) has taken the wraps off the world's first 2TB 7,200rpm desktop hard drive.

The 3.5in Deskstar 7K2000 uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology, and boasts a 32MB cache and a 3Gbit/s SATA interface.

Hitachi said that the drive is extremely quiet, and meets several green credentials, including compliance with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive and low power consumption. The firm claims that the7K2000 uses 10 per cent less power than previous generations when idle.

"The new Deskstar 7K2000 reflects our ongoing commitment to provide customers, channel partners and OEMs with proven, reliable solutions for enabling desktop computers, gaming systems, workstations and desktop Raid arrays," said Brendan Collins, vice president of marketing at Hitachi GST.

The new drive does not offer the areal density of the recently announced Samsung Spinpoint server drives, instead spreading the 2TB capacity over five platters. However, Hitachi is also refreshing its 7K1000.C range of performance drives to offer the same 500GB per platter density of the Samsung units.

"The demand for higher capacity disk drives is being fuelled by the persistent growth of digital information generated by consumers and organisations alike," said John Rydning, research director for hard disk drives at analyst firm IDC.

Hitachi was also the first to ship a 1TB hard drive when it launched the Deskstar 7K1000 in early 2007.

Solid state drives offer greater performance and lower power consumption, meaning that capacity and price have become the biggest differentiating factors available to traditional spinning disk drive manufacturers.

The Deskstar 7K2000 is shipping now worldwide with a retail price of $329 (£195). The revamped 7K1000.C range is due out in the coming months.