14 DAY TRIAL // Even though Samsung's hard disk drive division was acquired by Seagate in April of 2011, the company is still releasing HDDs under its own brand name, and it has recently announced the availability of the 2.5-inch Spinpoint M8 series laptop hard drive which can reach capacities of 1TB.
This top of the line model is built by using two 500GB platters and sticks to the standard 9.5mm height, which makes it compatible with all the notebook designs that can accommodate 2.5-inch drives.
According to Samsung, this high platter density was achieved by using the advanced format technology (AFT).
This also helped in reducing the power consumption of the drive by about 8%, since it features less components such as disk platters and heads.
In addition, when building the Spinpoint M8 hard drive series, Samsung has also re-designed the overall structure of the HDD to improve its shock resistance and includes the proprietary EcoSeek and NoiseGuard technologies that should decrease the noise produced while running.
The Spinpoint M8 hard drive family is comprised out of four new models which offer 320GB, 500GB, 750GB and 1TB of storage space, respectively.
All the HDDs have a spindle speed of 5400RPM, pack 8MB of DRAM buffer and support the SATA 3Gbps interface.
“The new Spinpoint M8 line-up supports the ongoing growth curve for high density data storage densities, especially as it raises the bar to exceed terabyte density levels in the mobile computing space,” said C.H. Lee, vice president of storage strategic marketing at Samsung.
The Samsung Spinpoint M8 hard drive series is currently in mass production and available worldwide with prices starting at £34.99 inc VAT (about $48 US excluding taxes).
On the other hand, the high capacity 1TB Spinpoint M8 (part number HN-M101MB) has an MSRP of $129.00.