Samsung Ships First 500-Gbyte Mobile Hard Drive To PC Manufacturers

Samsung Electronics is shipping the world's first 500-Gbyte, 2.5-inch mobile hard drive to PC makers and OEMs, the company said today. The new Spinpoint M6 will help manufacturers build notebook computers that can store ever-expanding data, video and music files.

The new drive means that laptop computers with dual-drive configurations can now have 1-Tbyte of storage capacity, according to the San Jose, Calif.-based Samsung. The Spinpoint M6 has a MSRP of $299.

Last week Fujitsu said it would begin shipping a 500-Gbyte, 2.5-inch disk drive in its MHZ2 BT series at the end of May. That drive will be 12.5mm in height. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is also expected to ship a 500-Gbyte disk drive starting as early as this month. Some of the manufacturers announced 500-Gbyte drives at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show in January.

IDC forecasts that the demand for 2.5-inch hard drives will reach 203 million units this year, up 20 percent from 2007.

The new Samsung drive consists of three 167-Gbyte platters in a 2.5-inch drive frame measuring 9.5mm in height, the standard for most notebook computers. It features a 5400rpm spindle speed, 8-Mbyte cache and 3.0 gigabits-per-second SATA interface with an optional free-fall sensor that protects data in the event the computer is dropped. Samsung says the built-in Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology allows the drive to store 160,000 digital images, 125 hours of DVD movies or 60 hours of high-definition video images.

Samsung also announced that it would begin shipping to key OEMs this month its new Spinpoint MP2 250-Gbyte, 2.5-inch hard drive. With a 7200rpm rotation speed, the premium drive is designed for high-performance notebook PCs, workstations and blade servers.

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