Thanks to an overzealous e-tailer, we already knew that Sammy's Spinpoint M6 was ready to be ordered en masse, but Samsung has finally put out some official verbiage to substantiate the obvious. The outfit's 500GB Spinpoint M6 ($299) and 250GB Spinpoint MP2 ($199) are both shipping as we speak, and that curious sound you hear over there is your current laptop begging for a storage upgrade. On a slightly related note, the company is also announcing that its 7200RPM Spinpoint F1 RAID-class (F1R; pictured) 3.5-inch SATA drive has hit mass production, meaning that you can bulk up your enterprise storage solution 1TB at a time for $299 each.

Read - Spinpoint MP2 / M6 hit mass production
Read - Spinpoint F1R hits mass production

We know you've been sitting on your hands since January, waiting for Samsung to ship this SpinPoint M6 500GB, 9.5mm laptop drive wonder. That whole "released in France" thing was just rubbing it in your face, and we apologize, but it looks like your wait is finally over: OWC's Woot! shop has the drive for sale as of now. You can't buy one sans enclosure, but the $310 USB 2.0 + eSATA version or the $350 FireWire 800 / 400 + USB 2.0 version (there's also a $320 model) should prove useful in housing an old 2.5-inch drive, or perhaps an ant farm.

[Thanks, Dan C.]

We've been wondering where Samsung's 9.5mm 500GB SpinPoint M6 laptop drive has been hiding, and it turns out that it's just been vacationing in France. No word on when these might make it Stateside, but if you're desperate (or French), your lappy can unbuckle that belt another notch or two for just €197 ($306).

[Thanks, onceuponamac]

Not quite a year after Samsung joyfully brought the Spinpoint MP1 into the world, the MP2 has arrived to rightfully take the baton. According to Sammy, the 2.5-inch drive is best suited in desktop replacement lappies, workstations and blade servers, and it's said to provide quicker read / write speeds than the 500GB M6 announced at CES. The 7,200 RPM drive is slated to land at $299, but an 80GB version will be available for a bit less cash, too. In less sluggish news, the firm has also restated its plans to deliver a 256GB SSD by 2009, and if you were looking for even more bulletin board material, Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor, proclaimed that it was "trying to double SSD capacity every 12 months." Music to our ears? You bet.

Read - Spinpoint MP2
Read - Samsung's SSD plans

Samsung seems hell-bent on cramming every bit of data it can onto a 1.8-inch drive platter -- just two months after announcing the former capacity champ 120GB SpinPoint N2, the company is pre-announcing a 160GB version. Other than the size, the essential stats remain the same: 4200RPM, 15ms seek time, sub-1W power consumption.
No work on pricing or availability, but our 80GB iPod is beginning to look positively cramped.

[Via TGDaily]

We already glanced at Samsung's SpinPoint F1, but the firm also let four other storage devices out of the bag (officially, at least) alongside its 1TB behemoth at its storage press conference in NYC. Up first is the SpinPoint N2 series of 1.8-inch HDDs, which offers up a "world's largest" 120GB flavor at 4200RPM for a dollar under $250. Catering to the 2.5-inch hard drive buyer, the MH80 lineup that we've been hearing about finally went official, and the "world's first" hybrid HDD to come in a 160GB iteration was introduced alongside a bevy of other SpinPoint M5 offerings ranging from 60GB to 250GB (in the dual-disk model). In the burning realm, the WriteMaster SE-T084L portable slot-loaded DVD writer enables USB disc writing with minimal fuss for just $150, while the $70 Super-WriteMaster SH-S203 SATA burner (falsely) claims the "world's fastest" title by churning out discs at 20x. Thankfully for those intrigued, all of the aforementioned devices are currently shipping, so snagging one (or more) in the near future ought not cause too much grief.

Oh Samsung, you and your obsession with the "world's biggest" puts even Jersey girls to shame. Chalk-up two more this morning with the world's highest capacity 1.8- and 2.5-inch hard disk drives. We already knew they were working a 250GB version of their 2.5-inch, SATA 1.5Gbps (and PATA) SpinPoint M5 spinning at 5,400rpm. It'll bring an 8MB cache, 24dB whine when idle, 2W power consumption, and 12-ms average seek time when it hits later in the month. According to Samsung, that makes this the largest 2.5-inch disk in a 9.5-mm profile -- whatever. The newly announced 1.8-inch SpinPoint N2 however, brings a world's first 120GB capacity to portable handheld devices like UMPCs (pictured) and perhaps -- if Sammy is real lucky -- future iPods. As such, the N2 spins at 3,600rpm or 4,200rpm with a 15-ms average seek and sub-1W power consumption to help keep your portable device, portable. Production of the 1.8-incher begins in July although we're pretty sure they're already providing samples to OEMs. Hear that Apple? Your 80GB iPod is starting to smell a bit stale. At least toss in a 100GB Toshiba disk for all those movies you're trying to sell us.

Samsung is launching a pair of 2.5-inch hard disk drives this morning for use by suits and regular ol' plebs. The business minded SpinPoint MP1 is the most interesting of the two by far, offering a massive 200GB of data spinning at a 7200rpm off a SATA 3.0Gbps interface -- an industry best. They say it's intended for enterprise RAID and blade servers but don't be surprised when people start bunging 'em into their laptops. The lowly SpinPoint M5 then, goes up to 160GB at 5400rpm with a SATA 1.5Gbps interface. However, Sammy wants you to know that a "dual-disk" model is under development offering up to 250GB of storage. Both will begin mass production in May for undisclosed prices.

Read -- M5
Read -- M1

Samsung is offering-up a heap of marketing spin along side their new 3.5-inch SpinPoint S166 series of hard disk drives. This time however, there's real truth to their ballyhoo. The new series of SATA 3.0Gbps drives feature a 7,200rpm spin, 8MB buffer, and manage to damp the noise level down to a mere 24/27.5 decibels at idle/seek. That's damn quiet for traditional desktop storage spinning at that speed. Watch for the drives to ship worldwide in 80GB and 160GB capacities sometime this month.