Back in August 2009, several news outlets reported that TDK had revealed an inconclusive roadmap to a group of financial analysts stating that the company would begin shipping 2.5-inch 640GB and 3.5-inch 2.5TB hard disk drives in the first quarter of 2010.
In particular, the roadmap depicted 320GB platters for 2.5-inch drive heads heading toward volume production that month and predicted that drive manufacturers should begin announcing 640GB two-platter drives for 2.5-inch Small-Form-Factor products by the end of the year, with the possibility of 640GB three-platter drives as well.
The implication at the time was that drive manufacturers could very well announce 3.5-inch four-platter drives with a total storage capacity of 640GB x 4, or 2.5-Terabytes. The statement didn’t seem out of question for many analysts, as we’ve already witnessed several companies like Seagate and Western Digital accomplish the 2TB mark for 3.5-inch drives back in January 2009.
Nevertheless, TDK has recently published an updated roadmap with new information regarding its hard drive capacities for the rest of 2010. The company is now moving its 3.5-inch products to 640GB four-platter implementations for upcoming models with 2.5TB of storage, and it doesn’t plan to stop there. The company will also produce five-platter implementations that will undoubtedly make for some very impressive 3TB hard drive products. Both four-platter and five-platter products are scheduled to appear on the market by November 2010.
At this point, pricing and production availability information have not been released, but we can infer based on previous high-capacity storage trends that these drives won’t come cheap.