The Deskstar 7K500, a 7,200 rpm Serial ATA drive, will be able to store approximately 200 hours of video, or about 100 average-length movies.
"Hitachi's new high-capacity drives allow DVR manufactures to expand the storage capacity of their products," said John Donovan, an analyst with TrendFOCUS, in a statement. "We expect these high-capacity DVRs to comprise the fastest-growing segment of the market, which is already growing at 90 percent annually."
Deskstar will ship later in the first quarter of the year, said Hitachi.
On Wednesday, the company also debuted a pair of ultra-small and small drives for the consumer market. One, dubbed "Mikey," is a one-inch mini-drive that sports 8 to 10GB of storage capacity. When it ships in the second half of 2005, Mikey will weigh in at only 14 grams, and take the tape at just 40 x 30 x 5 millimeters.
A larger drive, code-named "Slim," will also ship sometime in the last two quarters. The 1.8-inch format drive will come in two models, one boasting 30-40GB of storage, another with a capacity in the 60-80GB range. Slim, although significantly larger and heavier than Mikey, has the same 5 mm profile, making it suitable for devices such as sub-notebooks and tablet PCs, said Hitachi.