San Jose (CA) - Samsung is going more aggressively after the portable consumer electronics market with a new, slim hard drive in a 1.8" form factor.
The new "N" series of drives is available with capacities ranging from 20 to 60 GB and, in plain terms of capacity, won't cause much waves in a market that is starving for more storage space to store digital movies, music and pictures. However, what makes this drive series particularly interesting is its size.
Samsung achieves 60 GB capacity with just one 1.8" platter and therefore can claim to offer the highest storage density in this segment at this time. The limitation to one disk enabled Samsung to reduce the height of the drive to just 5 mm. This compares to about 7.8 mm of Toshiba's 1.8" MK drives, which integrates two platters and a total capacity of 100 GB.
Samsung claims that the 4200 rpm hard drives are "among the quietest on the market today" and offer an operating noise that is slightly below the sound level that is detectable by the human ear. The power consumption of the drive is rated at 0.3 watts in low-power idle mode.
