Samsung Launches 1.5 TB "EcoGreen" HDD

Just when you thought 1 TB hard disk drives were getting a little cramped, Samsung today announced its efficient 1.5 TB drive.

Samsung’s latest drive is dubbed the EcoGreen F2EG and is put together with three 500 GB platters. The company points to its high-density platters as one of the key factors behind the hard drive’s power efficiency.

“Lower platter count means less power to start the motor, less power to continuously spin the motor and a lighter head-stack which takes less power to seek,” said Andy Higginbotham, director of HDD sales and marketing for Samsung. “With fewer heads and disks, the F2EG hard drive has a lower probability of head-disk failures, enabling customers to build more reliable systems.”

Samsung says that its F2EG drive is 40 percent lower in power consumption in idle mode and 45 percent lower in reading/writing mode than “competitive drives,” though the company didn’t reveal which those drives were.

All material related to the drive focus on the power efficiency advantages of the F2EG, leading us to believe that this is one not meant for the demanding desktop user. Instead, Samsung is primarily shipping the drive to manufacturers of home media PC, external HDD, set-top box, and personal NAS.