Samsung's External HDDs Give Style to Eco-Friendliness

Introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show, the 2.5-inch G2 Portable and the 3.5-inch G3 Station are Samsung's newest lineup of external hard drives that target the young-adult market and are designed under the company's eco-friendly green concept. These products are free of halogens, use low amounts of power and meet the ROHS requirements for green computing.

“The market for external hard disk drives is forecast to grow in leaps and bounds as consumers push for storage that is easy and safe to carry around,” H.S. Lee, vice president, storage marketing, Samsung Electronics, said. “Our G Series eco-friendly drives offer a distinctive design in an assortment of trendy colors with high densities, easy connectivity and a suite of data security software.”

The G-Series 2.5-inch G2 Portable comes in storage capacities of 250, 320, 500 and 640 GB, whereas the more capacious G3 Station features 1, 1.5 and even 2 TB. They use a multi-level glitter design, which reflects the image of light on a beaded surface. This design protects the casing from scratches and may use four colors inspired from the nature motif, namely olive green, silver white, cobalt black and coral blue.

The new drives operate on the USB 2.0 interface with data-transfer speeds of up to 480 Mbps. They have key features such as the Samsung Auto Backup, which enables ongoing data preservation, the SafetyKey for password protection and even the SecretZone, a piece of software that provides personal data encryption.

The G3 Station drive possesses certain advanced technologies such as a smart power management, which reduces the power consumption by 95% (it operates on 0.09W instead of 2.5W). The technology enables the host computer to turn the drive on and off and the device will even automatically enter standby mode after five minutes of inactivity.

The G2 Portable and the G3 Station will reinforce the company's external drive portfolio of 1.8-inch, 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives. They will become available globally around the middle of January and will boast a three-year, limited warranty. The retail price suggested is of US$199 for the 640GB G2 Portable and the 2TB G3 Station, respectively.