Verdict: A perfect blend of capacity and performance
The hard disk has come a long way since IBM developed it in 1956. Therefore, it's appropriate that Hitachi, which bought IBM's hard disk division in 2003, is the first company to bring out a terabyte drive.
In the past, big-capacity hard disks had a bad reputation, as they were made by taking a previous-generation drive and adding an extra platter. This meant that big drives consumed more power, produced more waste heat and were noisier than smaller drives. In an attempt to re-write the reputation of the big hard disk drive, Hitachi designed the Deskstar 7K1000, or HDS721010KLA330 to give it its full name, from the ground up to be a big drive. It has more platters than most drives - five to be precise - but instead of using low areal density platters from a previous-generation drive, each platter stores an incredible 200GB. This means that not only is the HDS721010KLA330 the first to sport 200GB platters, it's also the world's first 1TB drive. IBM drives are known for their incredibly high areal density, and the HDS721010KLA330 doesn't disappoint, clocking in at 149Gb/in2, 16 per cent higher than any other hard disk.
Although it spins at an industry-standard 7,200rpm, thanks to its incredible areal density and whopping 32MB buffer, the HDS721010KLA330 is a great performer. We measured its average write STR as 70MB/sec - the fastest result we've seen. Its score of 1.52 in our Paint Shop Pro image editing test is also very fast for a 7,200rpm drive and, even more impressively, it took just 38 seconds to load our Far Cry test level - the same time as the infamous Western Digital Raptor X.
Conclusion
The HDS721010KLA330 is incredibly fast, reasonably quiet and its price per gigabyte is respectable. As a result, it's the first big drive that we can wholeheartedly recommend. However, like all five platter drives, it produces a lot of waste heat, so it's crucial to install it in a drive bay with plenty of airflow.
