San Jose (CA) - Meeting its scheduled Q1 2007 launch, Hitachi announced that it has begun shipping the Deskstar 7K1000, the company’s first commercially available 1 TB hard disk drive.

First seen at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Hitachi is calling the 7K1000 the world’s highest-capacity HDD. The one terabyte drive, which is 1000 gigabytes, provides enough storage for more than a third of a million MP3 files.

Hitachi’s main e-tail partner for the introduction of the product is CDW, though the drive is being shipped to retailers and online stores throughout the country.

The colossal hard drive carries a suggested retail price of around $400.