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back to article Samsung spins up its latest rusty rotators for release

Seagate’s Samsung unit has spun out the lightest, thinnest, 4TB USB-powered 2.5-inch drive in the world, with its M3 and P3 portable products. The case is 0.78 inches thin and weighs 8.3 ounces. It is 1/10 of an inch thicker than Samsung’s 2TB drive. Inside is a Spinpoint M10P drive with 800GB/platter – impressive areal …

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  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Not necessarily

    These drives will be great for storage capacity-strapped notebook users.

    Quite a few of the most recent car TVs read NTFS, so you can add a monster like this to a 50£ August 9 inch and achieve the relevant level of pacification in the rear seats for the duration of most journeys. Mine currently has a 500GB hanging off it which is ~ 300h of DVD quality video. 4TB is 2400h without bothering to re-encode it.

    2 1 Reply
    1. Kubla Cant
      Reply Icon

      Re: Not necessarily

      With 2400h of video it sounds like you're hoping to keep the back seat occupants quiet until they're old enough to drive their own cars.

      6 0 Reply
  2. Norphy

    Power

    "These M3 and P3 drives draw power through their USB 3.0 connection, which has a maximum 4.8Gbit/s bandwidth."

    Will these drives be able to work off a USB 2 port as well? Only reason I ask is that because USB 3 is rated to deliver up to 900ma from a single port rather than the 500ma a USB 2 port can provide. I can see something with five platters really needing it.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Scott Broukell
      Reply Icon

      Re: Power

      @Norphy - Cables with dual USB connectors are available and should draw sufficient power from the USB2.0 sockets. But this means you will need two USB2.0 ports to be available and in tandem / close proximity.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Dave Bell
        Reply Icon

        Re: Power

        The basic problem isn't new, and the double-port lead, one just for power, was usual for the earlier portable drives. But now there is more stuff using USB. And some portables don't even have two USB connectors.

        I could see an extension cable working to extend either the data or the power input, so you could get power from a car lighter-socket. A simple idea for the show-off market: a laptop briefcase with a built-in 12v input (car electrics compatible, so the input voltage can be higher, but that's a solved problem) with a powered USB Hub that could power the drive, or recharge the computer. I might have an external power-line-only USB connector, but not the data. It starts getting complicated, but having the locked case data-secure would be a selling point.

        Using a "proper" hub able to sit between the computer and the drive, and supply the drive from a single power source while handling the data at full speed the computer's port is capable of would beat a 2-to-1 lead powered from two separate devices.

        On the other hand, a huge portable drive such as these is maybe a bit too many digital eggs in one basket. It's an option I would be wary of.

        0 0 Reply
  3. M man

    Reg units?

    What this in reg units?

    or even cm and mm...

    1/10 of an inch......if you are using fractions you are using the wrong unit.

    2 0 Reply
  4. jason 7

    Now if only...

    ...they could get that 4TB on a single platter...

    0 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Now if only...

      Sammy (or anyone) would release consumer SSD's larger than 1TB...

      I'd love to put a 4TB SSD in my dev laptop.

      1 0 Reply
  5. CrosscutSaw

    Backup

    I don't understand, they keep making the drives larger. To me that means when it fails (it will), you will lose A LOT of data. Instead I'd be more interested in a super small, portable, dual-drive getup.

    Oh, and 5400rpm?? LOL.

    0 2 Reply
    1. Mikey
      Reply Icon

      Re: Backup

      Larger drives mean you don't have to have so many in a machine, all drawing power and making heat and noise. So there is a point to it, and it makes sense. Plus, it's cheaper buying one large drive than many smaller ones, then buggering about with the RAID setup, and all that overhead.

      As for the spindle speed, at that density you're looking at quite a lot of data passing under the head rather rapidly, so it makes less of an impact than you'd imagine. Coupled with a nice big buffer and plenty of read-ahead, even less again. And a slower spindle means less power used to get it to operational speed, so less draw on your battery. Win, game, set and match.

      5 0 Reply
      1. CrosscutSaw
        Reply Icon

        Re: Backup

        Yes I understand the spindle speed concept you're talking about.

        I'm still not cool with the huge single drives though. A mirror is not too much to ask.

        Now go clean yourself up, you got pretty excited there, man. LOL.

        0 3 Reply
        1. Dave Bell
          Reply Icon

          Re: Backup

          If the internal hardware is standard, and the bare 2.5 drive can be bought, somebody will be thinking of a small RAID box. Is USB 3.0 really fast enough?

          On the other hand:

          "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

          Andrew S. Tanenbaum

          The technology has changed, but it it's still something to think about. And maybe it's a lot more secure than the internet.

          0 0 Reply
  6. Fuzz

    what's wrong with 3.5" drives

    So we can get 4TB in a 2.5" drive but the biggest 3.5" non shingled drive is 8TB. What are they doing wrong with the 3.5" drives which are physically about 3-4x bigger than the 2.5"?

    2 1 Reply
    1. jason 7
      Reply Icon

      Re: what's wrong with 3.5" drives

      Are they really 3-4x bigger physically?

      Dunno about that. The platters are not that much bigger in a 3.5".

      1.5x maybe?

      0 3 Reply
  7. Phuq Witt

    "...The case is 0.78 inches thin..."

    Oh dear. Looks like someone's been studying at the Apple School of Twatvert English.

    1 0 Reply
  8. Cuddles

    "800GB/platter – impressive areal density – and therefore 5 platters for the 4TB model. Other capacity points are 500GB, 1TB and 2TB."

    Shouldn't those be in multiples of 800? Seems a bit odd to sell a 500GB drive when a single platter would already give you more than that.

    1 0 Reply
  9. dmacleo

    their 5tb usb drives run (as far as I can tell) around 5400 rpm

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152425

    and yet its been surprisingly speedy for me, I have one hooked to a server 2012r2 with essentials role installed (on ml350g5) that I use for dedicated client backup drive for 6 clients that essentials does (decided to try this as test case as I need to deploy something similar on a dell t110 II which has very limited drive cages, basically a desktop dell suckered people into buying as a server) and I noticed very little difference for client backups over the 7200 rpm 64mb cache 2tb drive I initially used. each client takes (on average) about 2 minutes longer however this is over usb 2 and not usb3. so if I was able to use usb 3 I am not sure if I would see any difference.

    would be interested to see how these run and power usage and temp readings in production environment.

    0 0 Reply
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    odd comment

    platter ? or splatter? or blatter?

    0 0 Reply

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