When it comes to life on the road with a notebook one day, you will probably drop your precious computer. If you travel a lot it may be that someone else drops your computer for you. Either way, many notebook users find that their machines end up hitting the ground and the most likely part to die from the impact is often the hard drive.

Samsung has announced a new hard drive series called the Spinpoint M7. The drive is available in 250, 320, 400, and 500GB capacities. All of the models use a new controller that promises power savings of up to 25% compared to conventional 2.5-inch drives.

The controller also improves performance by 18%. The rugged drives have a special rugged base and cover that allows them to withstand shocks of 400G/2ms while operating. Spindle speed is 5400 rpm and the drives have an 8MB cache, NCQ, and use the SATA 3Gbps interface.

Samsung