Hitachi’s new Deskstar 7K500 drive is the first desktop hard drive to reach 500 GB in size and one of the first to use the speedy new SATA II interface. You’ll be able to buy it with the older ATA interface for about $500 MSRP, or with the new SATA II interface for about $520 MSRP. It was reported to be ready for shipment in the 2nd quarter of this year. PC World has a big article on the tech behind the drive and the interface.
The drive uses longitudinal recording, which writes data tracks in concentric circles using particles magnetized horizontally on the surface of the disk. Hard-drive vendors may be able to squeeze as much as 250GB per platter out of longitudinal recording (current drives fit from 100GB to 133GB on each platter). Desktop drive capacity will top out at around 1 terabyte by late 2006, before running into technological problems in maintaining data stability. To get beyond such limitations, drive makers are moving to perpendicular recording, which magnetizes the particles vertically. Such drives should appear in desktops sometime in 2007, predicts John Buttress, research manager for hard disks at research firm IDC. And you won’t need a new motherboard or a new adapter card to use the drives.