Samsung on Tuesday unveiled a new mobile hard drive that it believes will add a level of ruggedization to ordinary notebooks without losing storage. The 500GB Spinpoint M7 has the same footprint as a typical 2.5-inch drive but has a shock tolerance of 400G/2ms and a hardened shell that reduces the likelihood of the drive skipping or otherwise taking damage. Simultaneously, a new drive controller at once lowers active power consumption by about 25 percent while speeding up access by about 18 percent versus normal notebook hard drives.

It spins at 5,400RPM and has an 8MB buffer; lower-capacity versions are also available in 250GB, 320GB and 400GB versions with similar performance and features. Test versions are already shipping to PC makers, and bulk shipments should start before the end of the month for Europe and North America.