Maxtor will ship its first series of 500GB hard disk drives during the third quarter.
The 7,200RPM drives will be used in a variety of company branded and OEM products, including its consumer OneTouch external hard drive line. In the OEM market the drives are expected to find their way into DVRs, set-top boxes, DVD/hard drive combo units and in enterprise- level storage.
Maxtor has lined up several new features for these drives, including thermal optimization, data management, security, a better interface and audio/video stream detection. Specifics on these improvements were not released by the company.
Pricing has not been set.