Initially available through Japanese channels, Hitachi has outed a 7200RPM version of its 4TB Deskstar series HDD for folks seeking top end capacity with the best possible performance.
Oddly however, despite there being 1TB platters available these days, Hitachi has chosen to stick with previous generation 800GB platters, meaning there are five used in this drive, as was the case with their 5400RPM based 5K4000. It is believed that Hitachi's hesitation to opt for four 1TB platters at this time stemmed from concern on the reliability front.
The Deskstar 7K4000 (HDS724040ALE640) uses a SATA 6Gbps interface with 64MB of cache and the advanced 4K format. Available currently in Japan, the drive works out to a rather hefty $377 USD which is no doubt in part due to the HDD disaster that resulted from the Thailand floods last year. It's expected that as the situation improves through 2012, prices on drives including these will decrease by a good margin.
Via: XBit Labs
KitGuru says: The sooner prices come back down to Earth, the sooner we can all start nabbing these things like hotcakes once again.