With a lack of any fanfare whatsoever, a Hitachi-manufactured 4TB internal hard drive has allegedly made its way to retail outlets in Japan. As evidenced by photos captured by Akiba, the HDD is branded under the company's Deskstar 5K line and would be the first commercially available at that storage capacity. Labels on the packaging indicate the drive was manufactured in Thailand during October of this year, right in the thick of the country's flooding crisis. Thus it stands to reason that consequential supply problems may be the reason Hitachi has yet to formally unveil the capacious Deskstar 5K, which AnandTech believes utilizes a five-platter configuration.

Though not the fastest internal drive we've seen by any stretch — it runs at 5900rpm, or what the company dubs "CoolSpin" — 4TB on a single drive is sure to please those among us with rapidly growing media libraries. The 4TB Desktar 5K carries a 26,800 Yen ($345) price tag in Japan, but unfortunately the lack of any official announcement from Hitachi leaves us scratching our heads when it comes to international availability.

Update: Official product pages are up for the internal and external HDDs.