Intel offers compact SSD for ‘dual drive’ laptops

Intel has pronounceable discover an ultrasmall solid-state drive, targeting dual-drive laptops that unify an SSD with a hornlike round drive.

Intel’s ultrasmall Solid-State Drive 310 is aimed at dual-drive laptops.

(Credit:
Intel)

Intel’s Solid-State Drive 310 Series delivers “full SSD action in 1/8th the size,” according to Intel’s declaration today. The SSD contains 34-nanometer (one of Intel’s most modern defect manufacturing processes) Intel NAND winkle module and is acquirable in an m-SATA modify bourgeois (see photo) in 40GB and 80GB capacities. It weighs meet 10 grams.

In constituent to dual-drive laptops, Intel said it is targeting single-drive Netbooks and tablets.

In a dual-drive laptop, an SSD is utilised to “accelerate rush instance and admittance to ofttimes utilised applications or files,” Intel said. High-end recreation laptop vendors hit been substance dual-drive configurations for whatever time. A exemplary plan consists of a large-capacity HDD and smaller-capacity SSD.

SSDs crapper be extremely fast, leaving tralatitious hornlike disks in the detritus when datum data. And in ultrathin laptops, they are existence utilised as the direct intend cod to expanse and modify considerations. Apple has touched its whole MacBook Air distinction to SSDs. And ultrathin designs same the Sony Vaio X program ingest SSDs because, same the MacBook Air, they cannot alter the qualifying magnitude of a accepted hornlike disk.

Lenovo said it module touch the newborn Intel SSDs. “The Intel SSD 310 program module earmark us to wage the advantages of a full-performance Intel SSD matched with the hardware of a hornlike round intend in a small, dual-drive system,” said blackamoor Butler, administrator of ThinkPad creation marketing, in a statement.

There are competitors discover there, too. Seagate, for example, offers a 500GB Momentus XT hornlike round with desegrated winkle module for player speed. And Toshiba is supplying the auto solid-state drives–what Apple calls “flash storage”–in the newborn MacBook Airs.

Intel’s SSD 310 is priced at $99 for the 40GB help and $179 for the 80GB version, both in 1,000-unit quantities.