Coming to a PVR Near You: Hitachi’s 400gb hard Drive

Posted by Fraser Lovatt on 10 March 2004 at 11:46 am | Tagged as: Platforms, Storage

Snappily titled the Deskstar 7K400, the drive is currently under test by equipment manufacturers hoping to use it in their products, and could be incorporated into PVRs late in the year. The 400gb drive is available with a PATA or newer SATA interface and spins at 7200 rpm, pretty much the standard these days. The drive uses 3.5” platters, so won’t be suitable for mobile devices. Currently, the highest capacity 3.5” drive is around 250gb.

Hitachi hopes the drive will give it a bigger role in the consumer electronics market due to the rapid growth of PVRs, hard disk recorders and media hubs in the home. Last year Apple bought 730,000 units of hard disks from Hitachi’s competitor Toshiba, so obviously they’re keen to see some of that business in future.

400gb translates to about 400 hours of broadcast television, or about 45 hours of HDTV. Or nearly a year’s worth of MP3s.

Apple’s hard drive future