Hitachi: 1 Terabyte Hard Drives Coming

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies on Monday announced plans to build hard drives using perpendicular recording technology that it says could allow for 1TB desktop drives and 20GB microdrives. The terabyte milestone is still a ways off, however, as Hitachi estimates the new drives won't reach consumers until 2007.

Currently, hard drives use a recording method that stores magnetic particles for data in parallel to a disc's surface. Drives using parallel recording can store about 100 to 120 gigabits per square inch. With the new perpendicular method, Hitachi claims drives can store 230 gigabits in the same space.