Samsung Launches Rugged Drive

Samsung has introduced a new hard disk drive it’s calling “rugged.”

The Spinpoint M7 500GB hard drive measures 2.5 inches and features 250GB of data storage per platter. It has a shock tolerance of 400 G/2ms and a rugged base and cover design, meeting what Samsung says is a call from customers for better data protection in tough environments.

“Our customers have been requesting hard drives with higher density, lower power and greater reliability for the mobile applications,” said C. H. Lee, vice president of storage sales and marketing for Samsung.

“The Spinpoint M7 answers these needs with a high-speed operating shock specification and extraordinary drive capacity for storing large data files, music, photos and videos,” Lee added.

Samsung has added a new controller to reduce power consumption in seek mode by a rate that the manufacturer says is up to 25 percent better than those of conventional 2.5-inch hard drives.

Additionally, tests using PCMark analysis software, Samsung reports, show an 18 percent improvement in overall performance over other 2.5-inch drives.

The Spinpoint M7 is available in 250-, 320-, 400- and 500GB capacities, features a 5,400-rpm spindle speed, an 8MB cache, native command queuing and a 3Gbps SATA (serial ATA) interface.

Perpendicular magnetic recording technology is said to enable the 500GB drive to store 160,000 digital images, 125 hours of DVD movies or 60 hours of high-definition video images.

Spinpoint 7 also comes with Samsung’s SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies for quieter operation, and complies with the European Union’s Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) regulations.

New rugged devices and peripherals are increasingly coming to market, particularly as government funding is poised to prompt new construction and infrastructure development initiatives.