Storage Analysts predicts that these massive storage devices would give digital video recorder manufacturers the freedom to work without worrying about disk space. The market of these big drives is growing phenomenally and with more players releasing bigger disks, the competition would drive the prices down and performance up.

In addition to the half terabyte monster, Hitachi also released its smaller brothers in the form of 250 GB Deskstar T7K250 and the 80 GB Deskstar 7K80. These drives run at a decent 7200 rpm and would give decent performance. All these three drives should be out in the market in the coming months.

For the market looking for small compact drives, Hitachi had other offerings. Their new mini drive ‘Mikey’ comes in sizes of 1-inch compartments and features eight to 10 GB of storage capacity. The weight is surprisingly low at just 14 grams!

A bigger version named ‘Slim’ is 1.8 inch big and comes from 30Gig to 40Gig capacities. Another version with 60-80Gig is also planned to go on sale later this year.