Samsung to ship ultra fast 256GB SSD Drive

Samsung plans to launch a flash memory based solid state disk(SSD) drive this year that has a 256GB capacity and a high speed SATA II interface. The drive's dimension match those of a standard 2.5 inch hard disk drive; it's designed to be a drop-in replacement for a laptop hard drive.

Solid state disk drives use a flash memory chips in place of spinning magnetic disks that hard disk drives use. The chips make the drives sturdier and faster but the per gigabyte cost is much higher too.

Samsung's is the second recently announced 256GB SSD drive. The other from US based Super Talent, is thicker than Samsung's, at 12.5 millimeters compared to Samsung's 9.5millimeters. That drive has a SATA I interface with read speed of 65mbps(megabits per second) and write speed of 50mbps. Samsung's SSD drive has a read speed of 200mbps and a sequential write speed of 160mbps.


Rather than use costly single-level cell (SLC) technology, the company has managed to develop a multi-level cell (MLC) storage drive that transfers as quickly as the best SLC storage while costing much less to produce than past SSDs. Improvements to the storage controller have also extended the longevity to as long as SLC drives, giving the 256GB drive longevity as good or better than some rotating hard disks. Power consumption is also exceptionally low at 0.9 watts in active mode.

In addition, the drive offers a sophisticated data encryption process that prevents data stored on the SSD from being accessed in an unauthorized manner, even after the SSD is removed from the PC.

Once introduced, the Samsung's 256GB SSD will mark the largest capacity SSD from the global market leader in SSD sales, effectively eliminating density as a barrier to SSD adoption in the consumer space. Samsung expects its new drive to be sampling for computer manufacturers by September and shipping to those clients by the end of the year; this applies to both a 2.5-inch drive for more traditional notebooks and a 1.8-inch drive for ultraportables and other much smaller devices. Costs haven't yet been announced.