14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung HDD, a division of Seagate Technology, has announced today the 4TB M3 Portable and the P3 Portable external hard drives, which according to Samsung, is the first 4TB USB-powered single drive to come in a 2.5" case in the world.
The company boasts that the 4TB M3 and P3 models are only 1/10 thicker than their previous 2 TB versions, and because of that they're perfect for mobile and portable owners. The two hard drives' body size is 82 × 118.2 × 19.85mm (width × depth × height) while the weight is 236g and come with different textures per model.
After acquiring the Samsung HDD division in 2011, Seagate continued this brand by producing new products that are pushing the boundaries for compact external storage. The two drives, M3 Portable being made for endurance and P3 for sleek design, are both based on the Spinpoint M10P 2.5” hard drive.
Featuring a USB 3.0 interface with up to 5 GB/s peak bandwidth will eliminate any need of external power supply, as the USB 3.0 can provide both the power and the speed connectivity required for these HDD.
In-house development is better
What is truly interesting is that being an HDD packed with Seagate technology, the new Spinpoint M10P is based on five 800GB platters, which probably use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) tech as the new 10TB HDD monster from Western Digital. Taking into account that WD's new HDD uses SMR technology patented by Seagate, it was likely that Samsung's M3 and P3 will have it as well, but this time in a 2.5" form factor, which is nothing less than impressive.
However, when taking into account that Seagate managed to cramp 800GB per platter on a small form factor HDD, while its main platter supplier, SDK, has announced 2.5" form factors HDDs that can store only 750GB/platter, it's quite possible that Seagate it's building these in-house.
Extrapolating this logic, we can expect Seagate to be quite possibly manufacturing much bigger enterprise-class HDDs that can hold 1.5-1.6TB of data per platter giving us a possible total of 9.6TB-able HDDs. Keeping in mind that WD already launched its Ha10, 10TB HDD, it's quite obvious the tech is widely spread and shared among different manufacturers.
According to KitGuru, the Samsung 4TB M3 and MP Portable hard drives made by Seagate will be available in late June through authorized distributors.
