Samsung ships 320 GB 2.5 inch hard drive

San Jose (CA) – Samsung rolled out a new version of its Spinpoint 2.5” hard drive series. The new drive is the second drive in the market to offer a capacity of 320 GB in this form factor.

The new M6 version is looking to attract customers in the notebook PC, slim PC and blade server markets and is available now, according to Samsung. The manufacturer said that 320 GB are enough to store about 91,000 digital images, 100-hours of DVD movies or 38 hours of HD movies.

As the previously released Western Digital 2.5” Scorpio 320 GB drive, the Samsung model is also rated at a disc rotations peed of 5400 rpm. However, the WD drive uses a SATA 3 Gb interface, while the Samsung drive comes with a SATA 1.5 Gb version. Both drives come with proprietary technologies protect stored content from physical impacts, which can occur, for example, when a notebook is dropped.

Samsung’s 320 GB M6 drive is offered at a suggested retail price of $249 ; the WD Scorpio 320 currently sells for $199 on the manufacturer’s website.