Micron this week begun shipping what they claim is the "industry's fastest" solid-state drive. Sold under the Crucial brand, their new RealSSD C300 uses the SATA 6Gb/s and Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) 2.1 specifications, allowing it to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 355MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 215MB/s. That's quite a bit faster than both Intel and OCZ's flagship products.


The RealSSD C300 is also backwards-compatible with the SATA 3Gb/s interface that most consumers are using today, where it supports maximum read and write speeds of 265MB/s and 215MB/s, respectively. The drives use high-speed synchronous MLC NAND flash memory, and will come in 1.8" and 2.5" form factors -- both of which will be available in 128GB and 256GB capacities.

Crucial is quoting a 1,000,000 hour MTBF rate for the drives and is backing them with a 3-year warranty. The only sticking point is the price, unsurprisingly. At either $799 for the 256GB version or $499 for 128GB, these aren't exactly a cheap upgrade, but if it's raw performance you are after then the Crucial RealSSD C300 will certainly deliver.