Samsung ships silent, speedy storage

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 05 April 2007 13:47

One of the barriers to the widespread use of media centre computers, DVRs and PVRs in the lounge room is that hard disks tend to be noisy. Samsung thinks it has the answer.

The new SpinPoint S166 7200rpm hard drives are "ultra silent and high-speed", the company claims, emitting 24dB when idle and 27.5dB during seek - 15 percent less than regular drives. This makes them "ideal for use in office computers, as well as in home consumer electronics such as DVR/PVRs, or any other hard drive equipped products intended for use in a quiet environment."

The first two models have capacities of 60G and 160G and either 3.0Gbps SATA or PATA interfaces.

Other features include 8M cache, improved head height control, an optimised actuator assembly for reliability and shock resistance, and a new controller giving faster data transfers and lower power consumption.

"This latest technology development by Samsung in the new SpinPoint S166 Series makes our high-end, award-winning hard drive products attractive to a wider audience by even further reducing acoustic noise and improving disk data transfer speed," said TJ Lee, vice president of sales and marketing in Samsung Electronics’ storage system division.