In the juxtaposition between high power, high capacity and low power usage, there's slim common ground, but Hitachi's latest 7200 RPM, 1TB hard drive is deftly trying to straddle it. With a 32MB buffer and a three-disk drive, the 3.5-inch Deskstar 7K1000B proclaims itself the world's most power-efficient 1TB hard drive, with up to 43 percent less power consumtion when idle. It even includes built-in encryption, which Hitachi claims has no impact on system performance. Not bad at all for $279.
Hitachi announced second-generation terabyte drive [Crave]
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I just hope this isn't vaporware as Seagate's 1TB FDE Barracuda has been thus far.
This also explains why the previous 5-platter model of Hitachi's 1TB drive is now selling for under $200 +$30 mail-in rebate (~$160) -- to clear inventory.
I was tempted to get the Samsung Spinpoint F1 RAID / "enterprise class" 7200rpm 1TB 3.5" drive, because I'm tired of waiting for FDE to materialize. But if Hitachi can get these on the market by the end of the month, I'll go for theirs instead.
"Not bad at all for $279." In light of all the sub $100 750GB disks out there, I believe you may be confused.
None of the other drives have Full Disk Encryption (FDE), which is indeed the new Value-Add for hard drive manufacturers (which, IIRC, maintain a more rigorous pace than Moore's Law). It's targeted primarily at data warehouses because secure deletion (or physically destroying the disks) is costly, as old smaller drives are retired and newer bigger drives added. With FDE, the decryption key merely has to be securely overwritten, and all the drive data is unrecoverable from strong cryptography. However, anyone privacy conscious (crossing borders, warrantless searches, etc.) also benefits from the mass-production of these drives as a side-effect.
Otherwise, you have a valid point given a $/GB measurement, but many people are also constrained by the number of bays in their enclosure (often 1, typically at best 4), so a premium of $60 more for the 1TB units is often acceptable.
Full Disk Encryption is the new hotness, though. Try turning on the "secure delete" feature in OSX for just a taste of how agonizingly slow it can be.
(Yes, TrueCrypt just hit 6.0, and there's md-crypt for Linux (and an option in the current Ubuntu install), but Bruce Schneier makes an excellent argument in Secrets and Lies about the value of transparency in the practice of security. Most people won't bother to learn/use those features, or will turn off "secure delete" because it's so slow.)
Now we have a potential hand forcer so to speak.
As in forcing the hand of TSA. These drives becoming common will require TSA to openly establish rules for air transport of them. The concept of an encrypted drive being called a threat to in flight security might unmask some agendas.