IDG News Service - Super Talent Technology Corp., a San Jose-based developer of memory devices, will soon begin commercial sales of a solid-state disk (SSD) drive for laptops that can store 256GB of data.
SSDs are an emerging class of storage devices that are typically drop-in replacements for hard disk drives, but store data on flash memory chips rather than a rotating magnetic disk. The use of memory chips means the drives are sturdier and brings a big performance boost. However, the per-byte storage cost is also much higher, so at present they're largely confined to niche applications.
The new drive is the same size as a 12.5-millimeter-thick 2.5-in. laptop drive -- that's thicker than most common laptop drives, which are 9.5mm high, but the same size as some of the larger capacity drives currently on the market. Compared to other 256GB SSDs on the market, the Super Talent drive is thinner.
Also, the drive has a SATA-I interface so it can be easily changed with a conventional disk drive without any special work.
Access time is 0.1 milliseconds, maximum sequential read speed is 65MB/sec. and write speed is 50MB/sec.
Super Talent is already shipping samples of the drive to customers and plans to begin volume shipments in late April. The company, which only supplies PC makers, will sell the drive for $5,950.
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