Hitachi Launches First 2TB 7,200RPM HDD Comments

ooo..4.4w may mean that it may be possible to have such a drive on bus power for USB3.

That 4.4W is idle power, the startup "surge power" would be at least twice that and active power not far off. You'll need multiple USB ports :)

"Unlike the largest SSDs, the very highest capacity HDDs tend to come with a price penalty"

Do you not mean profrmance penalty?

AFAIK they haven't actually increased density on the platters in this drive, they've actually included a whole extra platter and head - unlike rivals WD and Seagate. This drive may look good now, but better to wait for the WD 7200rpm one IMHO.

Is this a real launch? with drives available now because I havent seen these anywhere. Or is this just a paperwork exercise to say they are the first because the WD 2TB drive has been available to pre-order for quite sometime now and its specs look far better than Hitachi with 64 MB cache and 5 yr warranty on the RE versions

Until it's mobile/2½" X 9½", I'm not interested.

Think I'll get one of the WD 2TB 5 year warranty jobbies when W7 comes out. Should be big enough for the 64bit version.. just.

The 5400rpm drives are certainly availble as I've got a pair beside me in a WD Worldbook Studio RAID drive connected over eSATA. I have them as RAID 1 (mirror) but you can stripe them (RAID 0). They are a slow drive at about 3/5 speed of my Samsung HD501LJ 500gb drive.

Costs about £350 and allows you to get your backups up-to-date.