Samsung’s new, tiny SSD hard disk released

Samsung Electronics Wednesday unveiled a new portable solid state disk drive that boasts data transfer speeds five times faster than ordinary hard disk drives.

The SSD T5, which is as small as a business card, has been built with Samsung’s latest 64-layer V NAND technology, which helped enhance transfer speed with encrypted data security. Samsung began mass producing the fourth-generation V NAND at the end of last year.

The T5 is the third portable SSD from Samsung.

“We are confident that the T5 will exceed consumers’ expectations for external storage by offering faster speeds and a solid design that is lightweight and conveniently pocket-sized,” said Kim Un-soo, senior vice president of brand product marketing at Samsung’s memory business. “It is the ideal portable storage product for consumers and professionals who are in search of a fast, durable and secure device.”

Coming in four storage sizes - 250 gigabytes, 500 gigabytes, 1 terabyte and 2 terabytes - the T5 measures 3.0 x 2.3 x 0.4 inches and weighs 51 grams (1.8 ounces), easily fitting in the palm. The new SSD delivers speeds of up to 540 megabytes per second, which is up to 4.9 times faster than external HDD products. That means it can save a two-hour full-HD video in less than seven seconds.

Samsung says the T5 is designed especially for content creators, business and IT professionals as well as mainstream consumers to give instant, easy access to data. One with 2 terabyte storage is capable of saving 680,000 photos with 12 megapixel resolution and 600 full-HD videos sized at 3 gigabytes.

Sales have begun in 50 countries including Korea and the retail price starts at $122.99.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun@joongang.co.kr]