On Wednesday, Samsung announced its new SpinPoint S166 series of ultra-silent, high-speed HDDs, and those who were tired of reading about solid state drives rejoiced.

Along with a spin speed of 7,200 rpm and an 8MB buffer, the 80- and 160-Gbyte drives also feature the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and include Native Command Queuing (NCQ), according to Samsung.

But what exactly makes these new 3.5-inch HDDs so quiet, yet so speedy? Samsung attributes this sought after combination to the use of its proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies, which can both accelerate operational speeds while reducing those annoying whirring sounds.

Benchmarking tests (performed by the company) seem to back this up. In terms of sound power, Samsung says that competing 80- and 160-Gbyte hard drives generate approximately 2.8 bel in idle mode, and 3.2 bel while seeking. (Note: One decibel (dB) is equal to 0.1 bel, and it usually takes at least 2 Bel for the human ear to register the sound.) The S166 series, on the other hand, generates just 2.4 bel (idle) and 2.75 bel (seek).

The company also fiddled around with the system-on-chip (SoC) controller, and claims to have enhanced the drive's thermal, data transfer speed, and power consumption levels.

Samsung is currently shipping the S Series stateside now, and the drives are expected to be available worldwide later this month.