Intel X25-M 160GB Ships

Intel today said that it has started shipping a 160GB version of its X25-M solid-state drive for the mainstream. The new drive holds twice as much storage as the previous best but maintains the same speeds as other M-series drives, reading data well above hard drive speeds at 250MB per second and writing at a still-fast 70MB per second. Without moving parts, the storage has a lag time of just 85 microseconds versus the several milliseconds for rotating drives and consumes 150 milliwatts of power in typical use.

The drive continues to fit most any 2.5-inch, SATA notebook drive bay and has mean time between failures of about 1.2 million hours despite its use of lower-cost, denser multi-level cell flash storage. Intel hasn't named prices but should undercut the costs of more expensive single-level drives as well as its own X25-E performance SSDs. A 1.8-inch X18 drive at the storage level is expected to ship in early 2009 for ultraportables.

By Electronista Staff