Nathan Davis01 May 2007, 6:29 AM
One of Hitachi's distributors has unveiled the 'world's first' 1TB hard drive, but Seagate is seeing red, and is adamant that it will be first.
 Hitachi's terabyte Deskstar 7K1000: Nothing like polishing off a nice platter for breakfast |
Australian tech distributor Legend has today unveiled Hitachi's one-terabyte hard drive -- which it claims is a world first -- at this year's CeBIT Sydney, which runs to the 3rd of May.
"It's here!," claims Legend, of the 'Deskstar 7K1000,' even though market availability remains stuck on zero.
So when are they here, here? Legend's Adam Waye tells APC "We have indications from Hitachi that stock will be available to the Aus market at the end of May."
This goes against Hitachi's original promise of a launch in the first quarter, on which we previously reported.
Aside from the one terabyte capacity -- with one gigabyte equalling one billion bytes -- the SATA drive will feature 32MB of cache, suck down 9 watts of power when idle, and spin at the usual 7,200rpm with an average access time of 4.17ms.
The Aussie retail price, according to Legend, will be $599. This is a nice surprise for a new large drive, even though it's edging on double the price per gigabyte in comparison to a 500GB hard drive.
The war of words continues, however, between Hitachi and Seagate. As in the past, we were again told today by Seagate's Australian spokesperson that it's still quite adamant it will release the world's first terabyte hard drive, or at least in any sizable form.
"Seagate has been shipping products with 750GB of storage capacity, the highest available, since April 2006," says Seagate. It believes this is why it will be "the first to deliver 1TB hard drives in high volume for global customers," although this remains to be seen.
The actual date for Seagate's own terabyter isn't known, but it still promises "during the first half of 2007," which is fast coming to a close.
Pricing information is even lesser known, although it seems Seagate will be whipping out the magical Better Quality(TM) card. We're told its "products tend to be a little more expensive based on quality build."
Says Waye, "Hitachi drives will be competitive vs Seagate offerings."
Unlike Hitachi, says Seagate's spokesperson, Seagate will launch actual physical terabyte hard drives. "Seagate won't be doing a paper launch -- it will be a real one in high volume."
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