Toshiba on Thursday introduced what it says is the first 2.5-inch, 512-GB solid-state drive for notebooks. The drive will make its public debut at CES in January. Â The company will also be debuting a number of different capacity SSD drives–64-, 128, and 256GB drives, available in either 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch form factors. The drives feature MLC controllers, read speeds of 240 Mbytes/s, and write speeds of 200 Mbytes/s. The new drives provide a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebook computers, gaming and home entertainment systems, and will be showcased at International CES 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8 to 11, 2009, with mass production beginning the second quarter.
No word on pricing yet, which will likely determine. Early in the SSD market the other barrier was the limited capacity, as 16- and 32GB were the norm less than two years ago. Now that the capacities are approaching or exceeding traditional magnetic media.
