Solid state drives are finally moving into capacities that are useful for today’s modern applications. Toshiba said Thursday that it would be introducing a 512 gigabyte 2.5″ SSD at CES 2009 in January. The flagship SSD would be complemented by smaller capacity 64, 128, and 256GB drives available in the company, which would come in sizes of 1.8 and 2.5 inches.

Mass production of the drives is set to begin in the second quarter of next year. The drives would be able to read and write data faster than the typical HDD, with a 240MB/sec read rate and 200MB/sec write rate.

Toshiba’s move is likely an attempt to get a foot in the door in what will be the next big thing in storage drives. One in ten computers will ship with SSDs in 2010, ramping up to one in four by 2012. This would also benefit users through decreased load times, quicker waking times, and higher durability.

Moving parts in HDDs are more susceptible to data loss and errors from sudden movement and drops. SSDs do not have this problem, mainly due to there being no moving parts. Additionally, they are far quieter.

Pricing has not been announced as of yet. However, I’m hoping that these companies work on ways to produce them much more cheaply — I’d love for my next laptop to be SSD based (the form factors can be so much smaller), but right now they’ll break the bank.

 
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