Seagate announced that they’ve completed the acquisition of Samsung’s hard drive business (HDD). The acquisition was announced in April and as per the terms of the agreement, Seagate will acquire Samsung’s assets and infrastructure like M8 production line of 2.5-inch HDDs, senior manager and design-engineering employees from the Korea facility and more.

Additionally, Seagate will now provide HDDs for Samsung PC and notebooks and Samsung will supply its semiconductor products for use in Seagate’s enterprise SSDs.

Samsung has unveiled a new high capacity hard drive for notebooks. The 9.5mm thick Spinpoint M8 integrates a total of 1TB storage spread over two platters of 500GB each. Samsung says such high density was achieved by using advanced format technology (AFT) that raises the data storage density per unit area and also helps to increase operational speed and reduce power consumption.

Additionally, the Spinpoint M8 supports 3Gbps SATA interface and comes with an 8MB of buffer, EcoSeek and NoiseGuard to keep the noise levels down and enhanced shock resistance.

Samsung has started the mass production of the drive and will be available for $129.

Samsung has introduced a new S2 Portable external hard drive to please the gamers. It’s the S2 Gamers Edition hard drive that gives consumers one month free trial of Blizzard’s StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game. Other than that, you have the same S2 portable HDD with USB 3.0 support, SecretZone and SafetyKey to keep the data safe and private.

The S2 Gamers Edition HDD is available in 500GB and 1TB storage options for 90,000 won and 140,000 won.

Samsung has put an end to yesterday’s speculation by announcing a strategic partnership with Seagate. Under the agreement, Seagate will take over Samsung’s HDD business and will also extend the partnership with Samsung over other areas like:

- Extending the cross-license agreement between the companies
- Co-develop Enterprise Storage Solutions
- Disk Drive supply agreement to supply hard drives for Samsung hardware
- NAND flash memory supply agreement for use in Seagate’s SSD products

The overall value of this agreement is approx. US$1.375 billion where Samsung will be paid 50% with stock and remaining by cash. Samsung will also gain a stake in Seagate of about 9.6% and a place on Seagate’s Board of Directors.

Samsung is apparently trying to sell off its loss-making hard disk drive (HDD) business. According to WSJ’s source, the Korean giant is trying to sell the unit in order to tap newer “growth areas.”

One of the reasons for the loss is due to the rise of flash memory storage, which are used in mobile products like tablets, mobile phones etc.

Samsung is trying to offload the business unit for about $1.5 billion but is also considering to sell under $1 billion. Seagate is claimed to be a potential buyer.

Samsung today announced a new range of portable and desktop hard drives. Portable hard drives consist of entry-level M2 Portable series and C2 Portable 3.0 that feature storage support up to 1TB, USB 2.0 and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 support.

Additionally, M2 Portable has a wave-like matte finish to protect against finger smudges, curved sides for better grip and will come in four different colors – Brown Black, Noble Beige, Mist Gray and Clay Orange.

On the other hand, C2 Portable 3.0 will come in two color options Mystic Gray and Ruby Red and has an iF award-winning design with a transparent high-gloss cover and crystalized pattern. It also has Samsung Drive Manager which is a unified solution for various Samsung software like SecretZone, data backup, disk format and more.

The M3 Station is a desktop storage solution that also supports USB 2.0 and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface. It adopts a similar design like the M2 Station with rounded corners and LED light on the front. It will come in Brown Black and Noble Beige in capacities of 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB.

All the drives are expected to reach in Q2 2011 in different markets with M2 Portable shipments slated to begin from mid-April whereas C2 Portable and M3 Station is expected to ship from May.

Samsung has updated its 2.5-inch S2 Portable HDD external hard drive. The S2 Portable 3.0 drive spins at 7,200RPM and features SuperSpeed USB 3.0 that can transfer content at speeds to up to 5Gbps as compared to USB 2.0’s 480Mbps.

Additionally, the drive comes with other features like Dynamic Balancing, SilentSeek, NoiseGuard, Auto Backup, SecretZone and SafetyKey.

It will come in capacities of 320GB and 640GB.

Samsung has announced a new 3.5-inch environment friendly hard drive. The EcoGreen F4 or F4EG is the world’s highest-density drive that stores up to 2TB of data on its platter of 667GB each.

Samsung says F4EG is an apt solution for storage hungry consumers that is able to store heaps of data while consuming very less power and is free from harmful materials.

The F4EG is 19 percent better in terms of standby performance and consumes 23 percent less power during standby when compared to its predecessor, F3EG.

F4EG supports 3Gbps SATA interface and has SilentSeek, NoiseGuard, Native Command Queuing and 32MB buffer memory.

It will be available from early September for a price of $120.

Samsung is now shipping its 12.5mm 2.5-inch 1 terabyte internal hard drive. The Spinpoint MT2 is said to be ideal to be fitted in portable hard drives, digital TVs, set-top box etc.

The Spinpoint MT2 uses 333GB per-platter tech and in addition to storing large amounts of data, the drive ensures better performance and reliability. The MT2 gives about 20% more read/write performance and 4% less power consumption when compared to the competition. Additionally, the drive has a shock resistance of 400G (2ms) during operation and 800G (1ms) when the drive is powered off.

The MT2 spins at 5400RPM and supports SATA 3.0Gbps interface, SilentSeek, NoiseGuard, 8MB buffer and Native Command Queuing.

The MT2 is also available in 750GB capacity.

Samsung’s G Series HDDs are known for its use of eco-friendly materials and distinctive design. However, not many know how much these drives can endure. Good for us is that Samsung has uploaded a video of the same torturing the G2 HDD and ultimately running it down by Mini Cooper. The expected result should’ve been a sad death for the drive but surprisingly, the drive survived with all the data intact.

[Thanks, Ali!]