SanDisk has announced a couple of high-performance solid state drive (SSD) offerings, one aimed at the general market while the second targets notebook vendors. The first, dubbed Extreme SSD, comes in the usual 2.5-inch form factor and features a 6Gb/s SATA connection. SanDisk is promising read and write speeds of 550MB/s and 520MB/s, respectively, and says the drives will be available in two sizes -- 120GB for $189.99 and 240GB for $399.99 -- with a 480GB version for $749.99 arriving later this year.
There's no mention of the the controller used but the quoted speeds and capacities suggest the Extreme SSD family is SandForce driven. SanDisk says the Extreme SSD consumes 30% less power than a hard disk drive while generating less heat and noise, as well as boosting both application and boot performance.
Next up is the X100 family of enterprise SSDs, which will be sold directly to OEMs and can come as a 2.5-inch drive or in mSATA and customized form factors to accommodate the tight spaces inside ultrabooks. Available in capacities of 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB, the drives' performance will depend on configuration but the 256GB version is said to reach a maximum of 500MB/s read and 420MB/s write speeds.
According to Sandisk, the X100 models achieve long-term reliability through robust, continual background error checking and advanced data recovery mechanisms. They also support something called "Power Classes" which should allow the SSD to adjust performance to fit in a smaller power envelope.
