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.