Digital media hogs can celebrate. A new, whopping 400-gigabyte hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies can store up to 400 hours of standard television programming, 45 hours of high-definition programming or more than 6,500 hours of digital music.

Previously, the largest such drive available was a 300-gigabyte product from Maxtor Corp., said Dave Reinsel, industry analyst at IDC.   The average home or office computer currently has 20-30GB of hard drive space.

San Jose-based Hitachi said it designed the monster drive, the Deskstar 7K400, for audio/video products such as digital video recorders.

Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, predicts the number of households with DVRs will increase to nearly 25 million by 2007, from about 3 million today.