Toshiba slates 512GB SSD for '09

IDG News Service - Toshiba said today that it will soon offer samples of 512GB solid-state drives (SSDs), which could make their way to laptops and other devices by mid-2009.

Storage capacities of SSDs are doubling every few months, but Toshiba's 512GB version is the highest storage capacity announced for SSDs intended for consumer devices like laptops. Most PC makers today offer 128GB SSDs for laptops, and competitor Samsung recently said it put into mass production 256GB SSDs, which will become available in a few months.

Toshiba's 512GB drive

SSDs store data on flash memory chips and are often compared to hard drives. SSDs consume less power and have no moving parts, making them a good storage option for laptops compared to hard drives, which store data on magnetic platters. However, SSDs provide less storage capacity and are more expensive than hard drives.

Toshiba's new drive will be offered in a 2.5-in. form factor and is targeted at laptops, desktops and home entertainment systems, the company said. Samples of the new drives will be available in the first quarter of 2009, with mass production beginning in the second quarter.

The new Toshiba SSDs will be on display at the International Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas Jan. 8-11, the company said.

The drives offer a sequential read speed of 240MB/sec. and a sequential write speed of 200MB/sec., making them comparable to Samsung's 256GB SSDs. Random read and write speeds of the devices were not provided by the company. Sequential data transfers occur when running fixed tasks, like when a PC is booted. Random data transfers occur when data transfer tasks are launched at random times, like when starting a program. While sequential tasks are a good measure of an SSD's performance, analysts have said that random transfers are a better performance measure relative to PC tasks.