Samsung announces the SpinPoint M5 2.5 inch hard-drives. The capacity of the single-disk platform offers between 60 and 160GB. A dual-disk model is under development that will provide up to 250GB of storage space.

The SpinPoint M5 series utilizes perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, and the disk drive design has been optimized to allow ultra-precision adjustment of the head parking ramp position for high-density recording.

"The 2.5" hard drive market is registering double-digit annual growth, and we expect at least a twenty-percent growth increase in 2007," said Hyung Keun Park, executive vice president and general manager of Samsung Electronics' Storage System Division. Samsung's SpinPoint M5 hard drives are fifteen-percent quieter and use five-percent less energy than other models with the same storage capacity.
The new SpinPoint M5 hard drives feature a 5,400rpm spin rate, 1.5Gbps SATA interface and 8MB cache memory. PATA models will be added to the lineup in May.

Samsung has already shipped test samples of the SpinPoint M5 Series to OEM vendors and plans to begin mass production in mid-April.
Via this Samsung press-release.

Samsung also announced today the SpinPoint MP1 2.5 inch hard-drives for enterprices. With the industry’s highest maximum-density-per-disk at 100GB in the 7200 rpm class 2.5” drives, the SpinPoint MP1 series comes in 80/ 120/ 160/ 200GB capacities with a supporting 8/16MB cache memory. Mass production is scheduled for May, directly following sample availability in early May.