Toshiba announces entry into SSDs with 128GB drives

Toshiba has announced their entry into the rapidly crowding market for NAND-flash-based solid-state drives with nine products ranging in storage capacities from 32GB to 128GB in three form factors: an embedded module, and both 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch notebook friendly drive enclosures.

Toshiba’s SSDs are based on multilevel-cell NAND flash memory chips, which allows for large amounts of storage in such small devices. The drives will use a SATA interface with a transfer rate of 3Gbps to reach potential 100MBps read and 40MBps write speeds.

The company will reportedly begin sampling their 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drives in April and begin mass production in May. No prices have yet been announced, but more details are expected to be available next month when the drives are showcased in several Toshiba notebooks during the CES in Las Vegas.