Samsung have developed a new multi-level cell solid state drive that holds 256 GB of data, which makes it a practical competitor to hard disk drives in laptop computers. Practical - yes. Cheap – No.

Unveiled at the annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, the 2.5-inch, 256 gigabyte, multi-level cell (MLC)-based SSD uses a SATA II interface, and is the worlds fastest SSD – according to the company.

Samsung also boast that its new SSD is the thinnest drive with the largest capacity offering a SATA II interface.

Production of the SSD will begin at the end of 2008 but customer samples will be available by September. When the SSD launches it will be the largest capacity SSD on the global market and effectively eliminate density as a barrier to SSD adoption, the company said.

A 1.8 version of the 256GB SSD should be with us by the fourth quarter of 2008.

Joseph Unsworth, a research director at Gartner said. “This is an important announcement because of the performance of the drive and its availability [in] September of this year. As far as I know, this is the fastest MLC-based SSD that will be in the market, with only Toshiba having a credible rival that will be available this year.”

Like the technology found in flash memory chips, SSDs have no moving parts, unlike hard disk drives (HDDs) and their spinning magnetic disks with read-write heads suspended above them. Because the SSDs don’t have moving parts, they are generally more reliable and offer better performance than HDDs.

“SSDs typically have faster read performance, the endurance can be an advantage because of no moving parts — more power efficient, noiseless, no heat dissipation, etc.,” Unsworth added.

Samsungs new SSD has a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MBps) and a sequential write speed of 160 MBps, making it 2.4 times faster than a standard HDD. The unit is only 9.5 millimetres thick and when active consumes just 0.9 watts of power.

The only big drawback of SSD is the price per GB. “You can get 10 times more storage with an HDD than you can with SSD for the same price, and sustained write speeds can also be a consequence depending on application and quality of the SDD, [and] MLC has questions regarding its longevity in certain usage situations, so this could be viewed as a consequence depending on the applications,” said Unsworth.

With the high price, the technology will likely be used in premium-priced notebook computers Unsworth said, “Since this is MLC-based, really we are only talking consumer products like laptops, and the form factor will dictate that it will most likely be used for notebooks. The price is what will be key here — 256 GB is going to be expensive, at least $700 coming out of the factory, so I speculate that this will initially cost in the range of $1,000. The capacity is a nice storage sweet spot, but prices must come down in order to drive mainstream adoption.”

Samsung competitor Intel will launch a 128 GB SSD in the third quarter, and Toshiba plans to ship a 512 GB SSD by 2009.