Samsung Hits 2TB Mark with Green Hard Drive

Latest member of the EcoGreen line offers 2 terabytes for the desktop in a low-power, eco-friendly package.Samsung has announced the 2 terabyte EcoGreen F4 hard disk drive for the desktop market, the latest in its EcoGreen line of hard drives that (with a platter rotation of 5,400 rpm) emphasize lower power consumption (and, reportedly, audible noise) over throughput.

The list price is $119.99 with availability in September.

The unit uses three disks of 667 gigabytes each. This reportedly gives it power consumption in stand-by mode that's 23 percent lower than the previous four-disk model.

As with the previous EcoGreen drives, the unit uses printed circuit boards made without brominated flame retardants. While not all such compounds are known to be harmful, they tend to accumulate in body fat and some European countries restrict them as a precaution.

As with all Samsung hard drives since 2003, the EcoGreen units also comply with the European Union's Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS), which limits the use two different polybrominated chemicals plus lead, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium in consumer items.

The F4EG incorporates a 3.0 gigabits per second SATA interface, a 32 megabyte buffer, and native command queuing. There is also a 1.5 terabyte version of the drive.

From the start the EcoGreen line has been promoted for AV and surveillance applications where capacity and low power consumption trumps throughput.