Thursday, July 9th 2009
Samsung Intros 250 GB 1.8-inch Spinpoint HDDs with Native USB 2.0 Controller
Strengthening its line up of portable 1.8-inch hard drives for external use, Samsung today announced its 250 Gigabyte (GB) 1.8-inch hard disk drive, the Spinpoint N3U which incorporates a native USB 2.0 controller on its printed circuit board. Most external hard drives require the addition of a bridge circuit board to convert the hard drive's current interface into a USB interface. Samsung's N3U drive, however, uses a native USB interface and as such does not require this bridge board. This optimized design results in a smaller foot print, less power consumption and optimized performance, which is ideal for portable external storage devices. The N3U 1.8-inch drive consumes about 40 percent less power than a normal 2.5-inch hard drive of an equivalent capacity. It has two 125 GB platters for a total of 250 GB data storage capacity. The Spinpoint N3U also comes in 120 GB, 160 GB, and 200 GB capacities, the disk rotation speed is 3600 rpm. The drives are equipped with an 8 MB of cache memory. Initial shipments to OEMs are scheduled from mid-July with a MSRP of $199.00.
Source:
NewsWire
28 Comments on Samsung Intros 250 GB 1.8-inch Spinpoint HDDs with Native USB 2.0 Controller
Shame there isnt BOTH USB and SATA.
Oh, and that PCB and USB socket sticks out quite a bit.
i don't ever understand why we have so many different connections (ATA SATA USB..) when the speed of usb is higher and future usb3 reach 4.8gb/s speed that no connected peripheral reach atm.
I really like 1,8" hdds.
I think you're another person who doesnt know the difference between MB/s and Mb/s
I could certianly find some uses for it, mainly using it as a back up drive for customers machines when I do reformats onsite, but I would be too scared to break it carrying it around. Now if they sold a metal enclosure to put the drive in with the USB sticking out, I would jump on it.
Speed wouldn't be an issue, 3600RPM isn't really going to push the USB bus, IMO.
I don't belive the specs for USB3.0 have actually been made public yet, only rumors about it's performance, and I don't think 10x the performance is realistic for USB3.0.
USB 3.0 will be 300MB/s (each way) - basically matching sata II, right when sata III comes out.
For now, if the choice is between SATAII and USB 2.0, the decision should be pretty obvious (clue: it begins with 'S').'
But hey, if you want to hook all you drives up via USB, go for it. :toast:
I would rather have esata with power and data from 1 plug than usb3.
100MB/s = 6,000MB per minute, 360,000MB (351GB) per hour. (modern 1TB drive, SATA/E-sata/USB 3.0 when it exists)
50MB/s = 175GB per hour (average for a 2.5" drive? firewire 400?)
25MB/s = 88GB an hour (USB 2.0 equivalent)
I think it'd be very useful - When used for the right reasons.
And we all KNOW it will evolve to USB3 In time. Have to remember ppl's - USB3 is ALREADY being integrated into next gen board controllers right now - we may start seeing first supporting mobo' in just a few months.
I have a 16 gb flash drive, and whenever I need to copy a ton of files with it, I always zip/rar them, it goes so much faster.