SAMSUNG Electronics plans to launch a flash-memory based solid-state disk (SSD) drive this year that has a 256GB capacity and a highspeed SATA II interface. The drive's dimensions match those of a standard 2. 5-inch (and 9. 5-millimeter-thick) hard-disk drive; it's designed to be a drop-in replacement for a laptop hard drive.
Samsung's is the second recently announced 256GB SSD drive.

The other, from U.S.based Super Talent, is thicker than Samsung's, at 12.5 millimeters. That drive has a SATA I interface with read speeds of 65 megabits per second and write speeds of 50 mbps. Samsung's SSD drive has a read speed of 200 mbps and a sequential write speed of 160 mbps, according to the company.

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Solid-state disk drives use flash memory chips in place of the spinning magnetic disks that hard-disk drives use. The chips make the drives sturdier and (typically) faster, but the per-gigabyte cost is much higher, too. The Samsung drive should appear by the end of the year.