Samsung Announces SpinPoint S166 HDDs

Samsung has announced its new 3.5-inch SpinPoint S166 hard disk drives, offering 80 and 160 GB capacities, 7,200 rpm, while topping out at just 27.5 decibels.

Samsung Electronics has announced its new SpinPoint S166 series of 3.5-inch hard disk drives. The SpinPoints combine high performance (8 MB caches and 7,200 rpm speeds) with surprisingly quiet operating, emitting just 27.5 decibels during seek, and dropping down to 24 decibels in idle mode. (As a point of comparison, a soft whisper or a ticking watch usually lands around 20 to 30 decibels.) Overall, Samsung claims the SpinPoint S166 drives offer a 15 percent reduction in noise levels compared to competing hard drives, making them well-suited for use in home computers, consumer electronics like DVRs.

"Samsung is constantly pushing the technology envelope with the introduction of new and innovative products that meet the computing needs of today’s most demanding customers and operating environments," states T.J. Lee, Samsung Storage System Division’s VP of sales and marketing, in a statement. "This latest technology development by Samsung in the new SpinPoint S166 Series makes our high-end, award-winning hard drive products attractive to a wider audience by even further reducing acoustic noise and improving disk data transfer speed."

The SpinPoint S166s are available now in 80 and 160 GB capacities with either SATA 3.0 Gbps or PATA interfaces. Pricing and availability will vary by region, but it’s reasonable to assume these units will start showing up in living room computers, DVRs, and media center systems soon.