Samsung Electronics has quietly started to ship 1TB storage solutions that use much more advanced media that any other products from competitors. Samsung"s SpinPoint F1 HDDs use just three 334GB platters, a record in both areal density as well as platter capacity. By contrast, 1TB drives from Hitachi and Seagate use five 200GB and four 250GB platters, respectively. Samsung claims that thanks to only three platters versus four of five that rivals" products feature, its SpinPoint F1 will be generally more reliable.
The new device series runs at 7200 RPM, is available with 16MB or 32MB cache (depending on the model) and is designed for the Serial ATA-300 interface with native command queuing. The manufacturer declares a 8.9ms average read seek time and a 4.17ms average latency. The new drives are equipped with a set of Samsung"s proprietary technologies that lower acoustics levels and improve performance. Besides 1TB hard drives, SpinPoint F1 family also includes 320GB, 500GB and 750GB models. Samsung SpinPoint F1 drives are now shipping to the company"s customers. Suggested retail price is unclear.