Hitachi will ship its latest 3.5in desktop hard disk drives in Q3, the company said yesterday. The new units will feature the company's latest, 160GB-plus, 1.2bn bits per square inch density platters allowing it to deliver 500GB of storage capacity using just three disks, reducing drive complexity and power consumption.

The Deskstar T7K500 and 7K160 will both contain platters spinning at 7,200rpm and connect to the outside world via at least 8MB - 16MB on some models - of cache memory and across a 3Gbps Serial ATA bus with native command queuing (NCQ). They offer an 8.5ms average seek time and a 4.17ms average latency.

The T7K500 will be offered in 250, 320, 400 and 500GB capacities. The first two have two platters, the rest, three, with four and six recording heads, respectively, and non-operating shock ratings of 350G and 300G.

The 7K160 will ship with 80GB and 160GB of storage capacity, both based on a single platter, and one and two recording heads, respectively. They too can withstand 350G of non-operating shock.

Hitachi will also offer versions of the drives with parallel ATA interfaces. All six models will ship with a three-year warranty, Hitachi said. They meet the European Union's Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) regulations, it added.

In addition to the Deskstars, the same drives will be offered as the CinemaStar 7K160 and 7K500, both pitched at consumer electronics applications. They will ship in "early Q3". ®