Samsung Electronics Begins Producing Environment-Friendly HDD

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said that it has begun mass production of a 3.5-inch hard disc drive (HDD) that has much less of an adverse environmental impact than any other currently on the market.

Development of the unique component was completed in September 2003 and a limited number of units were supplied to Canon Inc of Japan. Now, Samsung has decided to install it in 65% of its PC lineup and will begin mass production this month.

Parts inside the new hard drive are held in place with a tin-silver-copper alloy instead of the usual tin-lead solder. No lead is used in the pain, shock-absorbing rubber or bearing lubricant, either.

The European Union (EU) has passed a resolution called RoHS (Restricting use of Hazardous Substances) that will ban the import of all electronic products containing lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium 6 (Cr6+), polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) or polybrominated dephenyl ethers (PBDEs) starting in July 2006.

Samsung Electronics plans to supply large quantities of its new hard drive to major PC makers and expects many new orders to be received from them.