Samsung unveils 'ultra silent' hard drives

Samsung Electronics has unveiled what it claims are its quietest ever hard drives. The SpinPoint S166 Series of 'ultra silent' 3.5in devices will ship in 80GB and 160GB capacities from the end of April.

The SpinPoint S Series offers upgraded versions of Samsung's proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuardT technologies which aim to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise.

Samsung said that the drives also boast technology designed to ensure better read and write sensitivity by dynamically lowering the fly height in read or write mode while maintaining a consistent fly-height in standard mode.

The devices also ship with an enhanced system-on-chip controller, and have a spin speed of 7,200rpm with an 8MB buffer.

The SpinPoint S series features the Sata 3Gbps interface and includes Native Command Queuing. An optional Pata interface is also available.

The Korean electronics giant claimed that benchmarking tests show that competing hard drives (80GB and 160GB models) generate on average 2.8 bel (1 bel equals 10 decibels) in idle mode and 3.2 bel in seek mode, while its S166 series generate 2.4 bel and 2.75 bel respectively.