Samsung today announced its new SpinPoint S166 Series of ultra silent and high-speed hard disk drives.

The 3.5" SpinPoint S166 hard drives are currently shipping in 80GB and 160GB capacities and will be available worldwide in April.

The new SpinPoint S Series of hard drives offer upgraded versions of Samsung?s proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise. Benchmarking tests on sound power have shown that competing hard drives (80GB and 160GB models) generate on average 2.8 bel (1 bel = 10 decibels) in idle mode and 3.2 bel in seek mode, while Samsung?s S166 series generate just 2.4 bel and 2.75 bel respectively.

In addition, three new technologies are implemented in the new S Series. An improved fly-height control technology ensures better read and write sensitivity by dynamically lowering the fly height in read or write mode while maintaining a consistent and high fly-height across the disc in standard mode; an optimized actuator assembly for single-disk mechanism reinforces the reliability of the disk?s mechanical functions and improves the non operating and operating shock characteristics of the drive; and an upgraded system-on-chip (SoC) controller provides significant thermal, disk data transfer speed, and power consumption enhancements.

The S166 Series has a spin speed of 7,200rpm and provides an 8MB buffer. The Series features the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and includes Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The drives are also available with a PATA interface.