Samsung has just announced that it has begun mass-producing solid-state drives featuring a high storage capacity of 256GB, designed specifically for use in notebooks and desktop computer systems. With the addition of the 256GB SSD, the company is now able to provide users with a more extensive lineup of flash-based storage solutions, which includes 8, 16 and 32GB SSDs for lower storage solutions, and 64, 128 and 256GB models for users with higher storage requirements. A 256GB solid-state drive is capable of storing 25 high-definition movies, each of 10GB in size, in just 21 minutes, a significant increase over a 7200-RPM hard disk drive, which is said to perform the same task in roughly 70 minutes.

Compared to HDDs, the 256GB SSD is also energy saving, using only 1.1 watts of power compared to two or more watts for a comparable HDD. Weighing in at 81 grams, the 2.5-inch multi-level cell (MLC) 256GB SSD is only 9.5 millimeters thick, and comes with optional proprietary encryption programming, providing full disk encryption in case you left it lying around. The price of this offering is yet to be announced.

Via