Samsung First to Reach 4TB Hard Disk Drive

We’ve only recently seen 3TB drives hit the market after a relatively long wait. Now, Samsung is the first to show off a 4TB prototype using 1TB platters. The next generation Spinpoint drive will be marketed under the EcoGreen F6 series and rotate at 5200 RPM. Samsung apparently confirmed the drive will ship in 2011.

Samsung Electronics has demonstrated the world’s first hard disk drive (HDD) with 4TB capacity and 1TB platters. The storage solution was shown off at CeBIT trade show last week, but it is unclear when Samsung is in position to ship it commercially.

The industry’s first 4TB hard drive belongs to Spinpoint EcoGreen F6 family of hard drives and thus has 5200rpm spindle speed. The HDD marked at HN-D201RAE uses Serial ATA-600 interface and has 32MB of cache, according to Heise.de web-site. While Samsung is naturally tight-lipped about the shipments date for the novelty, the company reportedly did confirm intentions to ship the 4TB hard disk drive in calendar 2011.

X-bit Labs

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  • Mike Garcen
    March 9, 2011 5:02 am

    Any idea why these first

    Any idea why these first releases of the new drive sizes are always the slower RPM type? I remember they did the same with the 2TB

    • millpub
      March 9, 2011 5:55 am

      The short answer would

      The short answer would probably be areal density.  The key to increasing drive sizes to these extreme levels has been increasing the areal density of the platters, jamming bits more densely onto the same 3.5 inch platters.  One of the side benefits of these more tightly packed bits is that drive heads do not have to move as far to get the next bit resulting in better performance at slower speeds.  The early 3TB drives running at 5400 RPM often performed nearly as well as 2B drives running at 7200 RPM.  The downside to the increased areal density is that the relatively immature manufacturing processes are usually more expensive and drive heads less reliable early on.  Release a slower drive first, maintain or even improve performance, and gain experience and build economies of scale to improve reliability and drive down costs ahead of releasing premium high speed drives.