Samsung Shipping One Terabyte HDD Using Only Three Platters

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has begun to ship its F1 series 1 terabyte (TB) hard disk drive. With the world’s highest recording density using only three disks, the new Serial ATA 3.5" F1 Series drives running at 7,200rpm are designed for enterprise environments, personal video recorders, desktop PCs and other external storage applications.

The F1 Series incorporates a wide range of proprietary technologies to achieve increased performance and lower power consumption. The three-disk structure provides a higher data storage density per platter, resulting in faster data processing speeds when compared with other 1TB drives. The optimized electronics and power saving modes reduce power consumption and resulting heat dissipation, making the F1 the coolest operating 1TB drive on the market. Under the same test conditions with similar drives, the F1 Series uses the lowest power, just an average of 6.7 watts in idle mode and an average of 7.2 watts in random seek mode. In addition, the drive operates at just 2.7 Bell in idle mode.

In addition, Samsung’s SilentSeek technology reduces overall noise and vibration emanating from the drive, ensuring whisper-quiet operation.

"Based on published specifications for Samsung’s F1 Series drive and similar class products from other suppliers, Samsung’s has the best performance and lowest power consumption for any product in its category today," said Mark Geenen, president of TrendFocus.

Perpendicular Magnetic Recording with Samsung’s Flying on Demand (FOD) head technology improves recording stability over changing temperature ranges. By using three disks instead of five, Samsung’s 1TB drive offers higher reliability from the fewer components inside.

The F1 Series drive features a 334GB per-platter capacity, a 7200RPM spindle speed, a 32MB cache, and an MTBF of up to 1.2 million hours. The F1 Series offers high reliability for enterprise requirements and is optimized for RAID applications. It features a SATA 3Gb/s interface with native command queuing and many additional SATA features. Its performance is further enhanced through Samsung’s optimized firmware system, a rotational vibration (RV) sensor for vibration tolerance, and an optimized system-on-chip (SOC) controller that lowers power consumption.

Samsung’s SpinPoint F1 Series is now shipping with a $399 MSRP.

Samsung Electronics

Comments

Samsung has announced this drive in June 2007 and it's now finally available. This unit is the only one-terabyte hard disk drive with three platters. Western Digital and Seagate technology are using four disks and Hitachi GST five to get the same capacoitgy. More disks mean more components - and consequently higher prices - and more power. To get this capacity on a smaller number of platters, Samsung increased the areal density to get a record 334GB capacity on each 3.5-inch disks.

Hitachi GST was historically the first company to launch a device hitting the historical milestone of one terabyte on January 5, 2007.

The Samsung's product suggests that drives at 1.5TB even are not a distant deam, if you were to group five of these 334GB platters.

In the hard disk drive industry, Samsung was never considered as a big player, with the reputation to have cheap units using standard technology. But it's changing. The Korean company is now the technology leader in desktop 3.5-inch form factor hard disk drives.

$399 is a relatively high price. The same amount was announced by its competitors for their one-terabyte HDD. But it's a list price. And be sure that Samsung will be able to lower it as its unit contains only three disks and six heads.