Samsung unveils pair of record-breaking drives

Samsung has announced that it is shipping a 2.5-inch 500GB hard drive and a fast 22X DVD burner.

The Spinpoint M6, the world’s smallet 500GB HD, is 9.5mm tall, meaning that it will fit into most laptop hard drive bays. The drive boasts a 5400rpm spindle speed, 8MB cache, and a 3.0Gbps SATA interface. Fairly average specs, but if you’re having issues fitting all of your music and movies onto your laptop HD, then this is the drive for you.

Samsung’s other offering is the SH-S223 DVD burner capable of burning data at high speeds, even on low-speed discs. The drive is capable of 22X DVD±R recording, 16X DVD+R Dual Layer recording, 12X DVD-R Dual Layer recording, 12X DVD-RAM recording, 8X DVD+RW recording, and 6X DVD-RW recording. Those speeds mean that a regular DVD±R disc can be burned in about 4.5 minutes, with all of the other formats taking a shorter amount of time than average as well.

If you absolutely have to have the latest and greatest, then both of these drives are for you (assuming you have both a desktop and laptop). Otherwise, it will probably be a good idea to hold off for a while as the drives will be fairly expensive. The Spinpoint M6 will retail for $299, with no price set for the SH-S223.