Samsung Goes Nuts With Dense Drives, Size Matters

Chalk one up for Samsung in the hard disc derby, catching up to rivals Hitachi and Seagate with the Samsung F1 series hard drive with a vast 1TB of storage space. Just look at that beauty, boys. The big news is its simplicity, packing the world’s highest recording density on a 3.5-inch hard disk, using just three platters to get to that gargantuan 1TB capacity. Yeah, less is more. It’s fast, spinning at 7200rpm and has a 32MB cache. It’ll be going for a relatively cheap price, too, at $399.

Okay, fellow supernerds, look at this drive porn gallery, and then peruse the deets on Samsung’s couple of other drives also rolled out today:
The Spinpoint N2 series also crams the data into a small form factor, stuffing 120GB into a $249 1.8-inch notebook drive that spins at 4200rpm. The N2 series is available in 80GB and 120GB caps, and the company says they’re the quietest drives available. It’s like a church mouse, but less squeaky.

Then there’s the $299 MH80 2.5-inch hard drive that’s a hybrid, because in addition to its 160GB of disk space, it has 256MB of flash memory on board. That’s great for Windows Vista laptops, taking advantage of Microsoft’s ready drive capability that keeps often-used applications in faster flash memory. Huzzah.

All these drives are available now. – Charlie White