Samsung's 2 TB EcoGreen Hard Drive Offers Highest Areal Density

Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics Co., Ltd. has released what it claims is the  world’s highest-density, environmentally friendly hard disk drive (HDD) for the desktop market. The EcoGreen F4EG, using fewer disks than the F3EG, features 2 terabyte (TB) capacity with 667GB formatted capacity per disk.

And is capable of storing up to 880 hours of DVD video or 500,000 songs in MP3 format. The internal F4EG, with three disks, utilizes Samsung’s high-density design technology to provide better performance, low-power and improved reliability to its ‘EcoGreen’ hard drives, said the maker.

With its three disks and advanced technology, the F4EG drive is 19 percent better in standby time performance and has 23 percent lower power consumption in standby mode than the F3EG that used four disks, according to product manger Albert Kim. The power consumption for average read/write mode on track is 6.3 W, while the average standby, as well as sleep, mode power consumption is below 1 W. Likewise, the average seek time is 8.9 ms with an average latency of 5.52 ms.

Plus, the new internal hard drive utilizes its low noise operation technology SilentSeek and NoiseGuard to achieve a quiet system operation. As a result, the idle acoustic noise performance is 2.5 Bel (typ), and seek performance is 2.8 Bel (typ).

Eliminating halogen compound and brominated flame retardant from the PCBA, the new model is produced with eco-friendly materials and meets all the environmental regulations including European Union’s RoHS.

Offering a spindle speed of 5400 rpm, the F4EG incorporates a 3.0Gbps serial ATA (SATA) interface, native command queuing and a 32 MB buffer memory. Typical data transfer rate is 300 MB per second. The 3.5-inch F4EG drive is available in 1.5 TB and 2 TB capacities in the United States and EU markets with a MSRP of $119.99 and scheduled for initial shipment at the beginning of Sept., according to Samsung.