Samsung tonight advanced hard drives in cautious form by upgrading the density, not the capacity, of its Spinpoint line. The Spinpoint F3 reaches a maximum 1TB of space but does so using only two 500GB platters instead of the usual three or four; the move significantly increases the speed of accessing data as much as 30 percent by reducing the seek time for data. It moreover improves the reliability of the drives by reducing the number of moving parts.

Every F3 turns at 7,200RPM and plugs into SATA or SATA II interfaces. The 1TB drive ships in August and will have a 32MB buffer, but a 500GB, single-platter version is available now with a 16MB buffer. Prices of the drives haven't been made public.