Samsung’s new 2.5” hard drives are being introduced today at the company’s storage press conference in New York City.

Samsung’s new 2.5” family includes the MH80 Series, the world’s first hybrid hard drive offered in 160GB capacity, the Spinpoint M5 Series with single-disk capacities ranging between 60GB and 160GB, and a dual-disk model provides up to 250GB of storage space. All of these models are shipping now.

Samsung’s MH80 is a 2.5” hybrid hard drive with 256 megabytes of flash memory that is optimized to work in tandem with Windows Vista capable notebook PCs. It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and when used with Microsoft’s ReadyDrive software, offers faster application launch speeds, faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology.

The MH80 hybrid hard drive leverages the high densities of magnetic storage technology, while the advanced NAND flash technology enhances the overall value with lowered power consumption, higher reliability and faster read/write access than traditional hard drives. The MH80 features Samsung’s ReadyBoot technology that offers up to a 50 percent reduction in boot and resume times from traditional magnetic media technology. The 256MB flash memory stores frequently used data in a fast access cache allowing the HDD motor to be turned off a greater percent of time. With the HDD motor turned off, the MH80 hard drive consumes significantly less power than a traditional hard drive, and tests have shown this may extend notebook PC battery life by 25 minutes or more before a recharge is needed.

The MH80 hybrid hard drive is currently shipping with a $299 (about €222) MSRP.

Samsung’s M5 2.5” Hard Disk Drive series offers single disk capacities that range between 60 and 160GB, while a dual-disk model provides up to 250GB of storage space.

The Spinpoint M5 series utilizes Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology, and the disk drive design has been optimized to allow ultra-precision adjustment of the head parking ramp position for high-density recording.

The new Spinpoint M5 hard drives feature a 5,400rpm spin speed, 1.5Gbps SATA interface and 8MB cache memory.

The M5 Series is currently available with a $249 (about €185) MSRP for 250GB.
Source: BusinessWire.