Samsung announces S Series external hard disk drives

High gloss casing with leather back

13 January 2009 9:57 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Samsung has announced its new S Series external hard disk drives.

The Samsung S Series family consists of a 2.5-inch drive S2 Portable and a 1.8-inch HDD S1 Mini.

Samsung says the new external drives are designed in a sleek high glossy casing with a leather back-cover "for a professional look and feel".

Claiming a smaller case footprint compared to competing external hard drives, the drives are USB bus powered and boast "power saving intelligence" with a low power "sleep mode" whenever the drive has not been used for 10 minutes.

The drives come with Samsung's Auto backup function and a "SecretZone" for important files and data in the form of software-based AES-128bit or AES-256bit encryption.

With password-protected SafetyKey, there's also a capacity gauge to allow users to see at a glance how much space is available, used, or designated as backup storage.

The S Series will be available from Q1 onwards in the UK, no capacities or pricing revealed.