Samsung announces silent and speedy S series hard drives

Samsung has announced its new SpinPoint S166 Series of ultra silent and high-speed hard disk drives. The 3.5” SpinPoint S166 hard drives are currently shipping in 80GB and 160GB capacities and will be available worldwide in April.

The new SpinPoint S Series of hard drives are 15 percent silent and faster than the earlier versions using improved SilentSeekTM and NoiseGuardTM technologies to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise. This significant fifteen percent noise-level reduction makes the drives ideal for use in office computers, as well as in home consumer electronics such as DVR/ PVRs, or any other hard drive equipped products intended for use in a quiet environment.

According to Samsung, three breakthrough technologies are implemented in the new S Series to enhance performance and reliability. An improved fly-height control technology ensures better read and write sensitivity by dynamically lowering the fly height in read or write mode while maintaining a consistent and high fly-height across the disc in standard mode; an optimized actuator assembly for single-disk mechanism reinforces the reliability of the disk’s mechanical functions and improves the non operating and operating shock characteristics of the drive; and an upgraded system-on-chip (SoC) controller provides significant thermal, disk data transfer speed, and power consumption enhancements.

The S166 Series has a spin speed of 7,200rpm and provides an 8MB buffer. The Series features the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and includes Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The drives are also available with a PATA interface for customers who require this application.

SanDisk 32GB flash drive

Sooner than later your hard disk drive will be replaced by solid state memories, SanDisk is looking to replace hard drive in your laptop with a 1.8-inch solid state 32GB flash drive. The company says its cool-running SSD Ultra ATA 5000 1.8" drive is a drop-in replacement for those old-fashioned mechanical hard disks. It packs the performance, too, with a 62MB-per-second read speed while using less than half the battery power of conventional discs.

It is 100 times faster than most hard disks, letting the thing boot Microsoft Windows Vista in 35 seconds. It's much smaller than the 2.5-inch 32GB flash drive Samsung introduced last March, but it's still rather pricey, adding around $600 to a laptop in which it resides.