128GByte notebook SSD from Toshiba

Toshiba announced that they are ready to release a 128 GByte SSD for notebooks and the initial market will be Japan. Toshiba managed to reach this capacity using the multilevel cell NAND flash technology. Most SSDs today are single-level cell drives, which store 1bit of data in each memory cell. MLC drives, on the other hand, store 3 or more bits in each cell. While MLC drives have slower transfer speeds and higher power consumption, they are also far less expensive to make.

However, the cost of SSDs is several times highers than of traditional storage devices and manufacturers justify this claiming that SSDs are faster and more reliable, not having moving parts.

"We believe that Toshiba MLC SSDs offer the right mix of cost and performance to satisfy today's demanding storage requirements for notebooks and ultra-mobile PCs," Scott Nelson, VP of memory for Toshiba division Toshiba America Electronic Components, said in a statement released Tuesday.

The price is not yest known for this new SSD from Toshiba, but they claim the new drive has a read speed of 100MBps and a write speed of 40MBps, making it faster than 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm HDDs. The company says it achieved the high performance level through the use of a Serial ATA II interface and a new MLC controller.

As a result, the latest drive performs extremely well in Windows Vista boot speed, application loading, general usage, and virus scan operations, according to Toshiba.

The new product weighs about three hundredths of a pound and is in an embedded module form factor.

Toshiba has also begun mass production of a 64Gbyte embedded module. The company plans to start sampling next month the same size SSDs in 1.8inch and 2.5inch drive enclosures.