Answer: Hitachi

Although we take large capacity drives for granted these days, a scant half decade ago manufacturers still hadn’t broken the terabyte barrier. That changed with the 2007 release of the Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000–the first commercial drive in the world to sport a terabyte of storage.

The Deskstar 7K1000 outpaced its nearest competitor by an entire 250GB but not without a steep premium. The cheapest you could find the Desktar in the months after its release was $345 (roughly 35 cents a GB, 10 cents more per GB than smaller capacity competitors).

As of 2012 the Deskstar 7K1000 is still in production (albeit revised over several versions) with a much more economical 9 cents per GB price point.