TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

If you have a laptop or carry around an external drive enclosure, or perhaps ever have an external drive lying around on a desk, one of your biggest fears is probably dropping the device and completely destroying it. As robust as drives are today, even a fall of a few inches can be enough to render them unusable. Samsung's newest line of drives, which will feature perpendicular recording, will have built-in fall protection. While for a desktop that doesn't seem to have much practical use, the laptops and other mobile applications these drives are destined for could benefit greatly from them. Drop the drive? Assuming it falls past a certain distance, 30cm being the figure listed, the drive has sensors enabling it to park its heads and turn itself off, protecting the head and the platters from contacting. Most hard drive deaths are caused by this, making it potentially very useful.

Their new M80 series will feature this, whether using 80GB, 120GB or 160GB drives. They also will feature a “Hybrid Latch System” to reduce the noise the disk generates when moving heads. These are also Samsung's first models to feature perpendicular recording, which has proven popular among Seagate devices and other drive lines.