SysOpt > News > Samsung Introduces New 'Hybrid' Notebook Drives, Denser 1TB Desktop Disk Models

NEW YORK -- Storage giant Samsung Electronics today unveiled here a slew of newly shipping products aimed at capturing the crown in PC storage speed and areal density.

A large part of that effort revolves around the company's announcement today that it's now shipping a hybrid hard drive -- a much-talked-about drive design that combines traditional magnetic disk media with OneNAND Flash memory.

Hybrid drives like new 160GB hybrid MH80 are widely cited as an important evolution in PC storage. The presence in the drive of 256MB of Flash storage, which caches data, means lower-power operation and greater reliability -- since the actual hard disk drive itself won't need to spin as often.

It also potentially means greater read and write performance, including speedier boot and application launch times (Samsung claims up to 50 percent faster than traditional hard drives). Indeed, Samsung even said the MH80 beats Flash-on-motherboard (AKA Intel's "Robson" or Intel Turbo Memory) designs in its own tests.

"The best way to understand the positioning of hybrid HDD technology is to think of it as the next revolutionary step in performance," said Andy Higginbotham, Samsung Semiconductor's director of hard drive sales and marketing. "First there was notebook 2.5-inch HDDs with 2MB DRAM caches. Then 8MB DRAM caches were introduced to improve performance. The 256MB Flash memory cache included in Samsung's hybrid HDD technology is the next major step in performance for 2.5-inch HDDs."

The MH80 hybrid carries a suggested price of $299.

The company showed off more advanced technology in its new 1TB SpinPoint F1 Series SATA 3Gb/sec. hard disk. The drive may not be the first one-terabyte 3.5-inch disk drive on the market, but it offers that capacity using only three platters; Unlike competing solutions that use five 200GB platters, like Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000, the Samsung 1TB SpinPoint F1 disk relies on three 334GB discs.

The drive also offers a 32MB cache and a 7200RPM rotational speed. Also according to the company, the drive's mean time between failures is 1.2 million hours, making it suitable for even high-reliability applications.

The SpinPoint F1 also includes Samsung's proprietary NoiseGuard and SilentSeek technologies that cut down on noise and vibration. Likewise, the drive's "Flying on Demand" head technology improves speed and reliability as the drive heats up during regular usage. Further hardware enhancements also cut down on power requirements.

"The new F1 Series is Samsung's largest-capacity hard drive to date and features the world's highest recording density in a 3.5-inch hard drive," Higginbotham said.

Samsung said the SpinPoint F1 Series is currently shipping, and carries a $399 suggested price tag.

High-Performance DVD Writing, Notebook Optical and Hard Drives

The company also showed off another high-performance drive -- this time, an optical media unit. Its new Super-WriteMaster SH-S203 DVD burner boasts staggering DVD±R write speeds of 20X. Kurt Schulz, Samsung Storage's national sales manager, said this speed level is supported even on standard 16X media, currently the fastest available.

As a result of this "overburning" high-speed technology, the drive can write 4.7GB of data to a DVD±R disc in just over four and a half minutes, a 12 percent increase over the company's previous 18X burner. In addition, the SH-S203 also supports burning at 12X DVD-RAM, 16X DVD+R Dual Layer, 12X DVD-R Dual Layer, 8X DVD+RW and 6X DVD-RW.

The Super-WriteMaster SH-S203 also ships with a SATA interface -- a design choice that Schulz said is based chiefly on simplifying PC builds rather than leveraging SATA's inherent speed advantages over PATA. (That is, optical media burning speeds remain the chief hurdle in increasing overall performance, rather than the aging PATA interface.)

Samsung said the SH-S203 is available from retailers today, with an average price of $70.

The company also unveiled its new, high-end WriteMaster SE-T084L slot-loading portable DVD burner, aimed at notebook users. Unique to the product category is the SE-T084L's ability to support 8cm DVD RW discs. The drive also supports LightScribe technology for creating burned-on labels on compatible DVD media.

The portable drive also supports full USB bus power, and offers recording at a number of relatively high burning speeds: 8X DVD+R, 6X DVD+R DL, 8X DVD+RW/DVD-R, 4X DVD-R DL, 6X DVD-RW and 5X DVD-RAM.

The WriteMaster SE-T084L also includes other Samsung optical drive features, including Speed Adjustment Technology for optimized burning to potentially damaged media; Tilt Actuator Compensation to compensate for warps in the media; and Double Optimum Power Control for enhanced reliability when writing to differing areas of a disc.

Also in the mobile space, Samsung also introduced higher-capacity 5,400RPM notebook disk drives. That model, the SpinPoint M5, supports capacities from 60GB to up to 250GB for high-end mobile users.

Samsung also said the SpinPoint M5's 160GB model sports a four percent lower weight than the competing 160GB solutions. It also said all the M5 drives are, on average, 15 percent quieter and require 5 percent less power than competing models.

The new SpinPoint M5 hard drives use a 1.5Gb/sec. SATA interface and offer an 8MB cache. The 250GB SpinPoint M5 is expected to retail for under $249.

For real mobility enthusiasts, the company also unveiled high-capacity 1.8-inch hard disk drives. The SpinPoint N2 Series offers up to 120GB in capacity with 4,200RP speeds, an 8MB cache, and support for PATA or ZIF interfaces.

The SpinPoint N2 120GB Series carries a $249 suggested retail price.

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