SanDisk unveils new SSDs for laptops and netbooks

SanDisk unveiled its next-generation solid-state drives (SSDs) at the International CES. One series is aimed at the hot netbook market and the other at laptops. The company's new higher-performance SSD for laptops are priced at less than US$250 for a 120GB model and are being positioned as a "drop-in replacement" for hard disk drives to extend the life of existing hardware.

The new G3 notebook and pSSD netbook drives boast sequential read/write speeds of 200MB/sec 140MB/sec, respectively.

If those performance claims pan out, the drive would surpass Intel's 10-channel consumer-class X25-M SSD drives for write speeds. The X25-M model has a sequential read and write rate of up to 250MB/sec and 70MB/sec, respecitively.

SanDisk's new pSSD-P2 and SanDisk pSSD-S2 SSDs for netbooks are 1.8-in. drives built on SanDisk's 43-nanometer multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. They are expected to become available in February in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities.

"Netbooks represent the fastest-growing PC segment in 2009 and 2010, yet widespread adoption of SSDs in netbooks has been limited by speed, capacity and cost constraints," Rich Heye, general manager of solid-state drives at SanDisk, said in a statement.

SanDisk did not release pricing for the new netbook SSD drives, saying only that a 32GB modular SSD is priced at parity with 2.5-in. HDDs in reseller quantities.

SanDisk's third-generation of 2.5-in. laptop SSDs are priced lower than other consumer SSDs on the market at $149 for a 60GB model, $249 for a120GB version and $499 for a 240GB drive, according to Doreet Oren, marketing director for SanDisk's SSD business. The G3 series SSDs are expected to be available in mid-2009.

By comparison, Intel's 80GB X25-M drive is priced at $595.

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