Samsung Sata II HD's announced.

[ferrisnox]

Well they made the announcement today... but I can't wait to see a review of these... looks like the same areial density 80gb. With just the new interface i/o's plus NCQ... hopefully they will stay very quiet, because it would seem thats their niche market right now... if you spot any of these in retail post here

 

[SirKenin]

I have never been a big Samsung fan. I have never seen them offer the performance of their competitors.

 

[DougLite]

Samsung is going with 125GB platters and sticking with their 2 platter design to achieve the new flagship capacity of 250GB (assuming it's this drive)

I will agree with SirKenin that Samsung has traditionally been behind on performance, and they are behind on Gigs per spindle as they only use 2 platter drives, but they are also the quietest drives around, and bring a solid 3 year warranty to the table at a competitive price. Especially with the new 250GB flagship, they are a perfect choice for PVR/HTPC applications where quiet operation is a priority, and performance is either CPU limited (encoding) or not important (playback). They are also great drives if you are on a budget, although Hitachi is quite competitive in the budget market as well.