Hitachi has announced that it is launching a 3.5-inch 1 terabyte hard disk drive for desktops at the beginning of this year.

The company will demonstrate the drive at CES next week.

A 3.5-inch TB drive for digital video recorder is also in the pipeline, with a promised launch in the second quarter of this year. It will be bundled with Audio-Visual Storage Manager software for easier navigation.

The one terabyte desktop drive, called the Deskstart 7K1000 will retail for around $399 when it comes out, which is relatively inexpensive for that amount of storage.

Also in the works is a 750GB drive, and a terabyte drive from competitor Seagate.

So will consumers be interested in having 1000GB of storage on their computers? With the growing popularity of digital video and digital still photography, the likelihood is people will need more and more space for their personal files.

Businesses, too, will appreciate the extra storage space on the 3.5-inch drives.