Specifications, Availability and Pricing

The Hitachi E7K1000 is available in three capacity sizes, 500, 750 and 1TB. All of the drives feature the same 7,200 RPM platter speeds and 32MB cache size. The 1TB drive is unique in its power rating, using .8 watts more than the two smaller models.

Like many of their competitors, Hitachi offers the E7K1000 with Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) as an option. BDE is an AES encryption scheme that makes it impossible to remove the drive from the host machine and use it to steal information from the drive.BDE is not found on standard drives like the one we are looking at here today and you would need to contact Hitachi directly to purchase the BDE enabled drives.

I searched high and low to find the 1TB E7K1000 on the market and was finally able to locate a seller listing all three capacity versions. PC Connection lists the 500GB model at 94.95 USD, the 750GB model at 180.68 USD and the 1TB like we are looking at today for 189.95.