Micron on Monday said to CNET that it would start mass-producing its long-promised RealSSD C200 256GB solid-state drive in March of next year. The timeframe pushes back the drive from its original fall launch and limits the current lineup to the 128GB drives common in the industry. The 2.5-inch SSD has been touted as a potential leader through its combination both of the large amount of space as well as its extremely high read speed, which matches Intel's at 250MB per second.

The setback gives Samsung a few months of lead time for its 256GB FlashSSD, which is slightly slower in reads at 220MB per second but has a much faster 200MB per second for writing data. Micron's drive writes at 100MB per second.

Micron's SSD partner Intel notes, however, that the large capacity won't require its just-unveiled 34nm memory technology while maintaining a relatively low price. The new process, which allows the two companies to put more memory in the same physical space, should deliver over 300GB of storage even in the 1.8-inch drives used by ultraportable notebooks.