Samsung Launches 320GB Spinpoint F4 Hard Drive

NEW YORK – Samsung officially released its latest Spinpoint hard disk drive – the F4 – which contains fewer moving parts than previous HDDs, making it more reliable and less noisy compared to previous Spinpoint models.

At a June 14 event here to highlight the company’s innovations around 3D and high-definition televisions and other consumer electronics, Samsung announced that it had started shipping the 320GB to its OEM partners. Samsung did not have an exact price for the Spinpoint F4 or a list of specific OEM partners.

What makes the Samsung Spinpoint F4 interesting is its design more than the actual data storage capacity. The F4 is designed with what Samsung calls a “one-head platform,” meaning the HDD only has one platter. The idea is to reduce the number of moving parts to make the F4 HDD more reliable and less noisy.

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When compared to the Spinpoint F1, the F4 HDD offers 10 percent better read/write performance and lowers the power consumption by 7 percent, according to Samsung. The 3.5-inch Spinpoint F4 also offers 7200rpm speed rotation, along with a SATA (serial ATA) 3.0 Gbps interface and 8MB or 16MB buffer memory.

Samsung is not the only storage maker looking to improve its HDD at a time when the industry is beginning to embrace solid state drives (SSDs). In May, Seagate announced a hybrid spinning disk and SSD device called the Momentus XT, which offers a 500GB capacity in a 2.5-inch design.

The Spinpoint F4 works with both Microsoft Windows-based PCs and Apple’s Mac, as well as workstations and servers.

In addition to the Spinpoint F4, Samsung also released a new external DVD writer called the SE-S084, which measures less than 1-inch thick and is 20 percent smaller than similar DVD writers.

Samsung also launched a Blu-ray disk drive that works with PCs. The SH-B123 has 12X read speed, which is an improvement over Samsung’s last Blu-ray disk, which offered 8X read speeds. The SH-B123 is available starting in July, although Samsung did not release an official price.