Samsung announced the new Spinpoint F4 7,200 rpm hard drive with a 320GB storage capacity that offers several differences than regular HDDs used today.
Samsung says the new drive has been designed to be more reliable than previous HDD models, with company officials noting the drive has 70 percent less parts than models issued a couple of years ago. Using less parts also makes the drive quieter and reduces power consumption, an effort by Samsung to cater to PC users looking to go green.
Samsung also said the 3.5-inch HDD features SATA 3 Gbps support alongside 8MB or 16MB memory buffer.
In another twist, Samsung is using one read/write head in the HDD, which is good progress, since Samsung normally sells HDDs using dual real/write heads.
"Higher performance combined with increasing capacities continues to accelerate demand for 3.5" drives in desktop storage," said In-Chul Park, Samsung VP of sales, in a statement. "The one-head platform of the new 7200rpm Spinpoint F4, packing up to 320GB of storage capacity per one head in half platter, delivers added reliability that our customers have come to expect from Samsung."
The Samsung Spinpoint F4 drive officially supports Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac operating systems, with enterprise server support also available.
Samsung plans to release the Spinpoint F4 320GB HDD sometime next month, with a "competitive" price tag expected.
Even though I still believe it's a matter of time before SSD takes over, I like that Samsung and several other manufacturers are willing to make newer, better HDDs. Western Digital and Seagate, which are battling for consumer HDD market leadership, also continue to enhance their HDD technology and produce new products.
