Toshiba preps ultra-small SATA solid-state drives
updated 01:55 pm EDT, Mon September 21, 2009
Toshiba 30GB and 62GB mSATA SSDs
Toshiba took advantage of Intel's upcoming Developer Forum to launch some of the smallest full-speed solid-state drives in the industry. Both 30GB and 62GB drives are made using 32 nanometer memory and come in the new low-profile mini SATA (mSATA) format and promise the better traits of SSDs in a smaller space. The new storage is a seventh the size of a 2.5-inch notebook SSD but still reads data at up to 180MB per second and writes at 70MB per second, both figures that put it on par with larger drives.
"Half-slim" versions of either capacity are also available and come in a removable card format with similar performance.
Either format is designed to put fast SSDs in devices that would otherwise be too thin or small to use conventional hard drives; netbooks and ultraportables are candidates, but the design would also allow for handhelds and other devices to get high-speed storage.
Mass production starts in October. Toshiba isn't expected to name customers ahead of launch, though it regularly supplies storage to Apple and most handheld or PC makers. The Mac producer's SSDs are normally provided by Samsung, however.
