Samsung Hits 1TB per Platter – 4TB Desktop & 1TB Notebook Drives Shipping Soon

Posted 03/06/2011 at 9:08am | by Justin Kerr

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Remember when the hard drive industry tried to convince us they would never be able to pump out hard drives bigger than 100GB? Well according to Samsung the platter density war is still alive and well, and a new breakthrough has allowed them to hit 1TB per platter densities well ahead of schedule. What does this mean for us as enthusiasts? Lower cost high-speed 3TB drives, along with 4TB versions in the not too distant future.

A bump in platter densities isn’t just for desktop class hard drives however, and Samsung was eager to show off its new standard height 2 platter 1TB 2.5-inch notebook drives as well. 1TB notebook drives have been on the market for almost a year now, but the 12.5MM height of last years models made them incompatible with an average laptop.

Samsung didn’t announce when the drives would be officially released, however they did clarify that the first shipping models will be part of the Spinpoint EcoGreen (5400 RPM) series, will contain 32MB of cache, and will be SATA 6 Gb compatible.

The advancement of hard drive densities seemed to come to a scratching halt when the industry hit 2TB (for oblivious reasons), but with EFI and software workarounds now shipping in bulk, lets hope we are back on the fast track. For its part, Samsung claims the current process technology should allow them to start cranking out 10TB drives without too much trouble, and I for one can’t wait.