Samsung has become the third major hard drive manufacturer to hit the 1TB barrier with a 3.5" hard drive, following in the footsteps of Hitachi and Seagate - although it manages to achieve a greater density than either of those two. The 1TB F1 series drive, as it will be called, spins at 7,200 rpm using three platters of 334GB, giving it a density of 241 Gb/square inch. Seagate's equivilent has four 250GB platters giving it a density of 205 Gb/square inch, whilst Hitachi has the lowest density on its 1TB drive, using five platters of 200GB giving a density of 144 Gb/square inch. Samsung's recommended price for the 1TB F1 drive is $400, with the drive presumably going on sale almost immediately.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is finally joining the 250GB 2.5-inch notebook hard drive market with the introduction of Travelstar 5K250. The Travelstar 5K250 is Hitachi's best in its class 250GB 5400RPM SATA II HDD. The drive is perfect for notebook PCs, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile devices. It also features a host of category-leading features including 400G shock protection, quiet acoustics and optional Bulk Data Encryption for hard-drive level data security. The 5K250 uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, which builds upon the highly-successful debut of the Travelstar 5K160 hard drives. Hitachi will also offer an enhanced-availability version, the E5K250, which is designed for applications needing around-the-clock access in lower transaction environments, such as blade servers, network routers, point-of-sale terminals and video surveillance systems.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) is today announcing volume shipment of the industry's highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive with new optional data encryption technology. With double the capacity and a 22-percent performance improvement over its predecessor, the 200-gigabyte (GB), 7200 RPM Travelstar 7K200 reigns supreme as the leader in this elite notebook hard drive segment. Now, with optional hard-drive level "Bulk Data Encryption" technology from Hitachi, the Travelstar 7K200 offers even greater cachet to notebook users by helping to guard against data loss and piracy.

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. Announced at CES 2007, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive is built using a 5-platter design to deliver 1TB of storage capacity. The drive is available with Serial-ATA 3.0Gb/s interface and 32MB of data buffer. At a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), the Deskstar 7K1000 is now ready to meet the needs of high-performance, gaming and media center PCs as well as external storage devices.

Hitachi GST today announced three new hard drive models targeting the enterprise market, including the 15K RPM Ultrastar 15K300, 7200 RPM Ultrastar A7K1000, and the company's first small form factor (SFF) hard drive, the 10K RPM Ultrastar C10K147. The new 15K300 Ultrastar is a 3.5-inch Ultra320 SCSI 15K RPM 300GB hard drive with 16MB data buffer. The drive comes with Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) as well as Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) and is also available with 3Gb/s SAS and 4Gb/s FCAL interfaces. Optimized for the power, performance requirements of servers the Ultrastar C10K147 is a 2.5-inch 3Gb/s SAS interface 10K RPM HDD with up to 147GB capacity and 16MB data buffer. The third Ultrastar A7K1000 hard drive offers 1TB of space for lower duty cycle enterprise environments. The Ultrastar 15K300 is available now with production quantities available in the first week of May 2007. The Ultrastar C10K147 and Ultrastar A7K1000 will be delivered in the second quarter of 2007. Additionat information is available at Hitachi GST.

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) released in Europe the new GSA-H55N, the company's first 20x Multi DVD burner drive with Security Function. Showcased last month at CeBIT, the new drive features the SecurDisc technology, which enables secure data protection and content access control when writing data on CD and DVD formats. SecurDisc protects user data against unauthorized access through password protection, applies a digital signature to all data to allow recipients to verify data authenticity, while it also detects altered data through checksums to verify data integrity and readability. The ATAPI drive supports 20x writing on DVD±R. Other writing speeds include 12x for DVD-RAM, 10x for DVD±R DL, 8x for DVD+RW and 6x for DVD-RW. The new LG GSA-H55N retails in Europe now for 59 euro. A lightscribe version of the drive (LG GSA-H55L) will be also available at the same time.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) has started to ship its 1TB hard disk drives (HDDs) introduced earlier this year commercially. Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721010KLA330 model features five 200GB platters and ten heads, has 7200rpm motor as well as 32MB data buffer. The manufacturer claims that the drive has 8.5ms read seek time, 9.2ms write seek time and 133.75MB/s maximum media transfer rate. Currently the company ships 1TB hard disk drive with Serial ATA-300 interface, but a model with Parallel ATA interface is also expected to be available. At present Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard disk drives with 1TB capacity are available in Japan for ¥51 500 - ¥55980 ($433 - $470). The recommended price of the 1TB drive from Hitachi for the U.S. is $399.

Dell this week announced that it will be the first manufacturer in the industry to start shipping computers with the first consumer 1 terabyte (TB) hard drive. Using the Deskstar 7K1000 drive from Hitachi, Dell will begin including the new drives in both its own line of XPS gaming systems and under the Alienware brand. Alienware Aurora and Area 51 systems will be receiving the new 1TB drives first. According to official Hitachi specifications, the new drive is a Serial ATA 3Gbps model with a 7200 RPM spindle rate and 32MB data buffer. Read time comes in at 8.5ms and write times at 9.2ms. Along with the new 1TB drive, Dell is launching a service called StudioDell, which the company calls a "video time capsule". StudioDell will allow subscribers to upload videos, which will be stored at Dell headquarters for 50 years, so that later generations may view them. Dell even indicated that the videos will be stored on the new 1TB drives from Hitachi.

Hitachi is showing off their new flagship hard drive. It has a capacity of 1000GB or 1TB. The retail packaging mentions a few interesting numbers. You can store 250,000 songs, 358 movies, 1000 hours of video, 333.300 photos or 500 games.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced the industry's first terabyte (TB) hard drive. Delivering superior performance and reliability, as well as capacity, Hitachi's 1TB hard drive meets the needs of consumers who want to create, share and store their digital information, and lots of it. Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 will begin shipping to retail customers in the first quarter of 2007 at a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), or 40 cents per gigabyte (GB). This new consumer-friendly price makes ultra-high storage capacity more affordable and accessible than ever before.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is today announcing availability of a new 1.8-inch hard drive with up to 80 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity and an unmatched combination of features geared to the needs of consumer handheld devices. The Travelstar C3K80 is Hitachi's second-generation perpendicular magnetic recording hard drive, which is based on the industry-leading reliability established first on Hitachi's 2.5-inch Travelstar 5K160.