Samsung on Wednesday night said it has started manufacturing the 256GB Flash SSD. The 2.5-inch solid-state drive stands both as the company's largest-capacity drive and also its fastest. Its sequential read speed is slightly lower than for its Intel rival at a still fast 220MB per second but is faster for sequential writes, recording data at a very high 200MB per second. The company estimates that the SSD can write 250GB of videos in about 21 minutes versus 70 minutes for a 7,200RPM rotating disk and launches apps about 10 times faster.

It should also clear data faster at about 100GB per minute for a pure drive wipe and consumes about half the power of a spinning drive at just 1.1W during average use. As with other solid-state drives, the chip-based nature of its storage also renders the drive nearly shockproof.

Samsung's drive slots into the SATA drive bays of most notebooks and shares the same 9.5mm (0.37in) height as most stock hard disks. No prices or availability have been given, though Samsung typically makes its Flash SSD lineup available as add-ons and also supplies the drives to PC makers.