For a while now we have been hearing about the coming hard drive shortage due to issues in the far east (mainly the flooding in Thailand), but before those problems reach the world, Hitachi is going to go for gold. Maximum PC is reporting that Hitachi has released the first 4 TB internal hard drive for sale in Japan. For those keeping score, that’s a new record for the largest storage drive.
Hitachi hasn’t actually announced this, which I find a bit strange, but Maximum PC found a website reporting the drive was on sale in stores in Japan. They report the drive is part of the Hitachi Deskstar line, has a SATA 6Gbps interface, 32 MB of cache and Hitachi’s proprietary CoolSpin technology, which is supposed to allow the hard drive to run both quieter and with less heat.
The reported price for a Hitachi Deskstar 4 GB hard drive is 26,800 yen, or about $345. That’s a steep price given the current price range for hard drives in the U.S. In all likelihood other manufacturers will have their own 4 TB offerings on the market soon so, unless you’re really desperate for the storage or have money to blow, I would recommend waiting.