Samsung has announced that it has developed a 2.5 inch 256GB solid state drive that can connect to your computer using the SATA II interface. The drive is able to read, sequentially at a whopping 200MB a second and has a sequential write speed of 160MB per second.

Besides being fast, the drive is also slim, it measures 100.3x69.85mm and is 9.5mm thick.

The drive is expected to have a long life with a mean time between failures (MTBF) of one million hours and the drive uses 0.9 watts in active mode.
In addition, it offers a sophisticated data encryption process that prevents data stored on the SSD from being accessed in an unauthorized manner, even after the SSD is removed from the PC.

Samsung is expected to begin mass producing the 2.5-inch, 256GB SSD by year end, with customer samples available in September. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008.

According to a Q1 2008 report by the semiconductor market research firm iSuppli, the SSD market will grow at an annualized average of 124 percent during the four-year period from 2008 until 2012. iSuppli now projects SSD sales to increase by an additional 35 percent in 2009 over what it projected last year, 51 percent more in 2010, and 89 percent more in 2011, and continue to show dramatic increases in subsequent years.