Samsung has send us information that the company has introduced and is currently shipping a 1.8-inch hard drive with 60 GB per disk capacity. The drive is only 5 milimeters tall and besides the 60 GB version also available in 20Gb, 30GB and 40GB versions.

These kind of drives are usually used consumer electronics, MP3 players, portable media players, notebook PCs, UMPCs, car navigation systems, GPS and other digital consumer applications.

The drives make use of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology and are available in both internal as external versions. Unlike traditional longitudinal recording technology, which lays data bits end to end where they can flip and corrupt data on the disc, PMR technology places the data bits perpendicular to the disc, which reduces the corruption factor. In addition, by placing the data bits standing on end, more data can fit onto a disc, allowing for greater storage capacity.

Samsung claims that its 1.8-inch hard drives are among the quietest on the market today, with 1.8 Bel, a measurement of sound. As the sound level detectable by the human ear is 2Bel this makes the operating sound of the new drives undetectable to the human ear. In addition, the N-series features ultra-low power consumption that is just .3 watts in low power idle. Besides that all are equipped with a 4,200-rpm spindle speed, and 7.14-millisecond average seek time and a 2MB data buffer.