Samsung SpinPoint single platter drive is lighter, quieter

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 12 April 2007 11:01

Business IT - Technology

Samsung is squeezing up to 160G onto a single platter for its new range of 2.5in drives intended for mobile devices including notebook and tablet PCs.

Initial models - due to ship later this month - in the SpinPoint M5 family will deliver between 60 and 150G capacity, and a future dual-platter model may offer 250G.

Designed for portable devices, the SpinPoint M5 drives are four percent lighter, 15 percent quieter and reduce power consumption by five percent compared with other drives of similar capacity.

"The 2.5" hard drive market is registering double-digit annual growth, and we expect at least a twenty-percent growth increase in 2007," said Hyung Keun Park, executive vice president and general manager of Samsung Electronics' storage system division. "With hard disk drives rapidly moving beyond PCs to include consumer electronics, we will provide customers with a new lineup of products with the highest available capacity and the best performance to enable new applications."

The 5400rpm drives feature 1.5Gbps SATA interfaces and 8M of cache, so the performance should be adequate for the intended market rather than stellar. If you need a fast 2.5in drive, Samsung has also announced the SpinPoint MP1 family.