Just a few years ago, it seemed both unlikely that we would have a 1 terabyte hard drive, and unbelievable that we would need that much capacity in our homes. Well, the wait for a drive that breaks this next threshold of storage capacity is almost over.

A Senior VP at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies says that a one terabyte drive should hit the shelves before the year is over. The drives will be 3.5-inches in diameter, which will, of course, mean they can easily and seamlessly be included in home PCs or servers.

Whether you actually need that much storage capacity is still up for debate, but it will be reasonably affordable. The VP says that manufacturers pay about 30 cents per gigabyte for hard drives, and that the retail price is around 50 cents per gigabyte. That puts one of these monster drives in your hands for about $500. A low price if you really hate erasing data.