Meanwhile, Samsung isn't completely reinventing these new disk drives. While they do offer a drive with an actual Serial-ATA interface that adheres to the 2.5 specification, which enables gross data transfer rates of up to 300 MBps and supports Native Command Queuing, they only include 8 MB of cache. In sharp contrast, most top competitive drive models include 16 MB of cache these days. However, Samsung has maintained what many believe to be the most important characteristic of the SpinPoint drives in its T133 models: they remain exceptionally quiet.

Still Using GMR Read/Write Heads

Today, the mostly widely used technology for read/write heads is GMR. Short for Giant Magnetoresistive head, GMR describes disk read/write technology that allows for data densities on disk platters of up 100 gigabits per square inch, which translates into about 130 GB per 3.5" disk platter. The magnetic field that emanates from these drive heads forces magnetic domains on a drive platter into horizontal alignment. Because of superparamagnetism (the effect whereby magnetizing one domain demagnetizes neighboring domains on either side), any further miniaturization of these individual domains is barely possible. That's why current industry activity focuses on changing the orientation of magnetic domains from horizontal to vertical. This saves lots of space when reading or writing data on a platter and should ultimately result in a tenfold increase in data density over time.

In the meantime as perpendicular recording is developed, Samsung will use TMR (Tunneling Magento Resistance) technology for the 400 GB models of its T133 series. The read/write heads for this technology carefully position two different pieces of ferromagnetic material next to one another, which enable two magnetic fields to operate simultaneously. These in turn can operate on two different individual magnetic domains, each with its own unique spin. As a consequence, data densities could ideally double. Thus, we're curious to learn what this actually will mean when we finally get our hands on some of the already-announced 400 GB drive models in the T133 series.

The first drives that employ vertical recording have been promised for the second quarter of 2006 (Q206). The SpinPoint T166 will deliver up to 166 GB per drive platter; with three drive platters in one device promised by mid-year, this brings the total drive capacity up to 500 GB.