Most of you probably know something about Samsung but I guess it all depends on your experience. While some of you love cell phones (and in this case you probably love the sleek design of the U600 and U700 series) others can be particularly interested in Samsung's DDR/DDR2 chip production. In any case, one thing's pretty clear: Samsung manufactures more devices than you might think. And if we're to speak solely about the IT field, aside from the Dram chips, one of their best product lines is the consumer-end hard disk drive segment, dubbed "SpinPoint".

If you love Samsung and their hard drives, then the next phrase will bring you even more joy. Because they've just announced the mass shipping of their latest F1 HDD which packs a total capacity of 1TB. Some might say that actually it's no big deal, since both Hitachi and Seagate currently offer 1TB units. In fact, the F1 is somewhat different from Seagate or Hitachi due to the fact that it uses only 3 platters instead of 4 (Seagate) or 5 (Hitachi).

As a result, Samsung is currently offering platters with the highest density ever recorded in a magnetic storage unit (334GB/platter). This achievement is strongly related to Samsung's PMR development since only with the help of a highly developed perpendicular recording technology was it possible to produce this type of platter. Two versions of the F1 1TB HDD exist, one with 16MBs of cache and another with 32MB (matching Hitachi's 1TB unit in terms of cache performance).

Aside from the slightly lower power consumption and noise, Samsung also claims that its product is more reliable than Seagate's/Hitachi's own 1TB HDDs. However, no one knows for sure whether it's economical to produce platters with such a data density, because they are a lot more expensive than 200/250GB data platters. Evidently, 334GB/platter can translate into even higher capacity hard drives and in the near future, that could give Samsung an important advantage over its competitors. No word on the MSRP yet, but the F1 will probably be sold for about $350-$400 (same price range as Seagate's or Hitachi's 1TB HDDs).

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