Intel announced it has increased the storage capacity of its current line of SSDs up to 160GB, putting the Santa Clara, CA.-based company in better position to compete with Samsung and Toshiba.
The 2.5-in. X25-M is shipping immediately, with the 1.8-in. 160GB version expected to begin selling in Jan. 2009. Prior to this announcement, Intel's largest SSDs it has shipped were 80GB versions of the X25-M and X18-M Serial ATA SSD.
The "introductory" price for the Intel 160GB SSD starts at $945 when purchasing less than 1,000 SSDs.
SSDs are continuing to increase in size, as manufacturers begin to up the size of the technology, despite the overall cost of the drives remains too high for most consumers. Samsunga is now mass producing 256GB SSDs while Toshiba plans to introduce a 512GB SSD at CES next month in Las Vegas.
Price is one of the major downsides that is severely limiting SSD adoption today, analysts agree. Along with the pricey Intel drive, Toshiba's SSDs, starting at $220 for 64GB, goes all the way up to $1,652 for the 512GB SSD.
SSDs may never fully phase out HDDs, but they reduce data access time and don't have moving parts, which reduces failure rates when compared to HDDs. In addition, SSDs also use less power per GB than HDDs and often times have a significant performance advantage over other storage technologies.
