Hitachi Ships The First 4TB Hard Drive

[Scallica]

Hitachi has started shipping the world's first hard drive with 4TB capacity. There has not been an official press release from Hitachi yet, but a Japanese site Akiba has spotted the hard drive on sale. The hard drive carries model number HDS5C4040ALE630 and is branded as Deskstar 5K.



The brand suggests that it's a lower performance drive with rotational speed of 5900rpm (Hitachi calls this "CoolSpin"). The drive comes with 32MB of cache just like the 2TB and 3TB versions, and uses SATA 6Gb/s interface. The drive is priced at 26,800 Yen, which translates to $345. For comparison, the 2TB Deskstar 5K costs 19,780 Yen ($254), so the price per GB is very close. The drive appears to use four platters, so one more platter than the previous 3TB monster.

The release comes at an odd time because hard drive supply is still very limited due to the floods in Thailand. The components of this drive are manufactured in Thailand according to the product packaging, meaning that the supply may be very limited in the short term. There is no word on global availability, though.

Footnote: Posted by Mfusick on AVS forum: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1378975

[STC]

Ten of those and I'm sorted for a few weeks

[newfiend]

Haha.. Ya would like to have a few of those in a WHS myself. Hard to imagine just a few years ago that TB HDDs were considered "huge" server drives. I don't think I would consider building a desktop PC without at least a 2TB in it now a days.. Our digital lives keep expanding and the need for more storage will increase as we move away from physical media. Man.. How times have changed.

Sent from my WP7 using Board Express

[staknhalo]

Pisses me off that this means they're gonna be available here soon....but I gotta control myself and wait till the prices drop back down

[tommo]

darn floods :/

Good to hear these are coming as it usually pushes the prices of the previously biggest capacity drives.. the 3TB.

[Scallica]

Now on newegg for $369.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145563

[KHTPC75]

A few of thouse would be nice for my FreeNAS box I was going to build to backup my camera DVR system. I almost had a heart attack when I was pricing a build and saw that the Seagate 1TB drives I bought for $59 back on 04/08/2011 are going for $109 today!

[barnabas1969]

A few of thouse would be nice for my FreeNAS box I was going to build to backup my camera DVR system. I almost had a heart attack when I was pricing a build and saw that the Seagate 1TB drives I bought for $59 back on 04/08/2011 are going for $109 today!

No kidding. My 2TB 7200RPM drives were $119 or $109 each. They're still almost $200 now. Crazy.

[adam1991]

And yet, I just bought a 3TB external (USB 3.0) WD drive for $170 shipped.

Go figure.

[barnabas1969]

And yet, I just bought a 3TB external (USB 3.0) WD drive for $170 shipped.

Go figure.

Care to share the link to that deal?

[adam1991]

Sure:

http://www.jr.com/western-digital/pe/WD_BACW0030HBK/

[richard1980]

Or if you want one now (that link says they are on order) and are willing to spend $0.99 more, you can get one at Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136749

[STC]

A quick word of caution on external drives
[edit] that you are intending to open up and use the drive in your HTPC.

A few months ago I purchased a WD My Passport 1TB portable unit for the purpose of breaking it open and using the drive in a notebook. It worked out I'd save 40 bucks compared to a bare bones drive. It was a no brainer, foregoing any warranty.

Upon opening it up I discovered a USB 3.0 adapter fitted direct onto the drive. The drive did not have the regular SATA brains logic board you would expect to see on the underside. Essentially it made the drive unusable inside of a regular notebook.

As USB 3.0 becomes more prevalent, I see more and more external hard disks 2.5 and 3.5" coming out in this format.

[barnabas1969]

Hey, Adam... did you open yours up? What kind of interface is on the actual drive inside?

[adam1991]

haven't gotten it yet. Will get it tomorrow. It wasn't supposed to ship until Wednesday, but it shipped last Friday instead.

I wasn't planning on opening it up; it's going to sit on my router and share out to be an automated backup image drive for several computers. I suppose I could take a look-see if it won't break a warranty seal.

BTW, I noticed on newegg that ten bucks more gets you a Seagate.

Regardless, for that price, it seems a good deal. Makes me wonder if prices are coming down finally.

[barnabas1969]

Sorry to go off topic, but... "sit on your router"??? Did you mod your router to add a USB port and share it on your network? Inquiring minds want to know.

[adam1991]

No mod required:

http://support.apple.com/kb/SP20

Going to use it for automated Time Machine backup for all five Macs in the house. I'm also going to set up an NTFS partition for True Image to do the same thing for my 7MC box.

[barnabas1969]

Cool feature to have on a router.

[mcewinter]

Cool feature to have on a router.

I thought this was a fairly common feature. My DIR-655 has aUSB port for either a storage device or a printer...I've never used it.

[barnabas1969]

I've never seen a router with a USB port for use with an external hard drive. I have seen them for use with a printer though. Of course, you have to realize that I've been using the same router for years. It works fine and I have no reason to upgrade. It's an old Linux-based Linksys WRT-54GL. I really don't need 802.11n... my 802.11g is faster than my internet service... so my wireless is not the weakest link in the chain.