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Samsung shows off world's biggest 1.8-inch drive: 160GB
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]
100 times HDD speed possible thanks to lasers
The concept of light powered computing has surfaced again, this time thanks to a group of researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Using laser technology that we're not even going to pretend to understand, they've figured out a way of transferring data in speeds measured in quadrillionths of a second -- a measurement so fast even our spell checker doesn't recognize it. The technology is around 100 times faster than traditional magnetic storage methods, but it still has some way to go until it can replace your hard drive: for one thing, the researchers need to figure out a way to reduce the footprint of the laser, currently at an apparently massive 5 microns width. As always, we shall wait in anticipation for any developments.[Via Slashdot]
SSD prices in freefall -- won't overtake hard disks anytime soon
So in addition to dropping a couple of high-capacity disks this morning, Samsung also gave us some interesting (albeit, depressing) insight into their thoughts on Solid State Disk penetration at a session on SSD vs. hard drives at a product conference in Japan. Big stuff when you consider Samsung's pioneering role to supplant traditional 1.8-inch hard disk drives with flash-lovin' SSDs. We've already heard from Sandisk that SSD prices should fall by about 60% annually. Nice, but SSDs are currently 5x the cost of their mechanical brethren: $7.5/GB compared to $1.4/GB for HDDs. Even by 2010, Samsung (backed by DataQuest research) still estimates at least a 3.x gap: $1.9/GB for SSDs vs $0.9/GB for HDDs according to Hwang's law. In other words, we'll be paying a significant premium for flash memory's lickity quick boots and greater reliability long into the future. Still, a 128GB SSD for $243? Give us two, please.
Samsung announces 1.8-inch 120GB disk for UMPCs and perhaps, iPods
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's silent and speedy SpinPoint S166 series of disks
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.
