As we approach to the terabyte mark in consumer level products, Hitachi has announced it's about to unveil a massive hard drive designed to store corporate data or record about 400 hours of video for consumers, the drive weights in at 400GB at 7200rpm.

The company is billing the Deskstar 7K400 as the largest-capacity ATA drive with 3.5-inch platters. Currently, the largest 3.5-inch ATA drive is a 320GB product from Maxtor, according to John Monroe, an analyst at research firm Gartner. That drive, though, spins at 5,400rpm, which translates into slower performance than a 7,200rpm drive.

So which drive runs at 7200rpm?

I think it was saying the Maxtor one is large, but only spins at 5400rpm...The new Deskstar is a 400GB 7200rpm drive

400GB of data getting trashed in one go.. Hitachi can be proud

Never gonna buy this drive. no more deathstar problems.

I think that's a bit too big...and yeah, wiping out 400GB in one shot...that would suck.

The Hitachi harddrives have none of the problems the IBM 60 and 75 GXP series had.

I've bought a few and they all work great, furthermore we have many of them in computers in the school I'm admin for and not one has failed....

They are faster and more quiet than the other 7200RPM harddrives, only strange thing with them is the meow sound they make every 30min or so ;-)

some ppl have use for a single drive this big where there isn't room for another drive for exampel yet as much space as possible on one drive is needed, for example in xbox.

So, this really isn't too much, in fact drives this big and bigger are long overdue.

Need this kind of space..? Here's the answer....

200GB x 2 in RAID 0 - More economical and faster.

Hitachi designed those 400GB drives for set-top boxes (PVR) where there is only space for one hard drive. If you can only fit one hard drive, and space is at a premium, then that drive would be ideal.

The "meow" sound is the heads moving into the parked position after 30 mins. It was the heads remaining in one spot for long periods, which caused the deathstar problems with the older GXP60/75 series.