Maxtor has announced that it will begin shipping 500GB ATA/133 and Serial ATA hard drives in the third quarter of this year. The half-terabyte drives will spin at 7,200RPM and be available across Maxtor"s QuickView, MaXLine, and DiamonMax lines. 300MB/sec transfer rates will be supported on the Serial ATA models, and since Maxtor"s current generation of desktop drives already support Native Command Queuing, it seems likely that the new 500GB drives will as well.
There"s no word yet on whether Maxtor"s new 500GB drives will have a higher areal density than its latest DiamondMax 10, which sport 100GB platters. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies" 500GB DeskStar 7K500, which was rolled out at this year"s Consumer Electronics Show, uses five 100GB platters.