Hitachi's 1/2 Terabyte Beast!

Upon reading this article about Hitachi's newest hard drive I could only think of one thing; how many months of living in poverty would it take to purchase one of these monstrosities. Not that I have 500 Gigs of data to store, but if I did, why would i trust all of that to just one drive, and a Hitachi at that. Their philosophy of get there first with the most moving parts to break has damaged their credibility with both home and corporate users.

HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, a few years back IBM sold their hard drive business to Hitachi) has almost always been the first to hit large plateaus with their hard drive technology. They were the first to 400 GB and now they are the first to 500 GB. Even though it is definitely good to be the first to levels like this, past reliability issues continue to haunt them. To reach the 500GB mark, Hitachi has decided to stick with the same density on their platters (100GB Per). This 5 platter configuration increases both noise, heat, and the above mentioned moving parts. The upper surface of these drives heat up to 127° F (54° C), which pretty much requires you to get an after market hard drive cooler if you want to keep your data in a safer situation. Seagate and Maxtor have both been working on their 500 GB drives, using two or three platters which help them to avoid the heat and noise troubles that will no doubt plague Hitachis in the future.

No matter how many problems the Hitachis may have, being the first to the 1/2 terabyte mark is definitely good for them, and it will solidify they as the industry leader in many people's eyes However, my advice to you is to stick with the smaller drives until the Seagates come out, your simply taking the aspirin before the headache by going that route.