Samsung Electronics, a maker of various electronics equipment, has announced a new lineup of 2.5” hard disk drives (HDDs) that includes a model with 200GB capacity and 7200rpm motor speed, the first combination of the kind in the industry. The drives also feature technologies that boost their reliability.

Samsung’s SpinPoint MP1-series products will be available in 80GB, 120GB, 160GB and 200GB capacities with 8MB or 16MB cache. The new family features 7200rpm spindle speed, which should ensure top-notch performance, as well as Serial ATA-300 interface with support for native command queuing technology that can improve computer’s responsiveness when the hard drive is used very intensively.

In order to improve reliability of SpinPoint MP1 hard drives, Samsung implemented a rotary vibration controller (RVC, which prevents the head from leaving the track under severe vibration conditions) and an optional digital free-fall sensor (FFS) to protect the disk drive from vibration and shock.

Even though Toshiba has been supplying 200GB 2.5” hard disk drives for several quarters now, its 200GB dual-platter MK2035GSS featured 4200rpm motor speed, which did not ensure really high performance neither for notebooks, nor for enterprise-class computers that utilize HDDs in 2.5” form-factor.

Samsung said that MP1-series is designed for enterprise applications such as workstations, RAID (redundant array of independent drives) servers, and blade servers. Nevertheless, nothing prevents makers of mobile computers to install them into their machines.

Mass production of Samsung SpinPoint MP1 is scheduled for May, directly following sample availability in early May.